What's going on with Epik and Rob Monster?

Larion said:

@Rob Monster did you really sell your company to GOOG for 2.5 billion ?

https://domaingang.com/domain-news/...tup-bought-by-google-for-2-5-billion-dollars/

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DigitalTown is definitely a multi-billion dollar idea.

Executing that idea inside of an undercapitalized OTCBB-traded company was pretty long odds but we certainly went for it in a big way until a newly appointed Board director thought the company could execute the idea better without me and orchestrated my removal. I am still one of the largest debt holders so we'll see how this plays out.

For anyone not familiar with the idea, see my Banned TED Talk:


The idea was slightly ahead of its time, though not by much.

Sorry if I stear the conversation to already archived topic, but I have just seen this Health Spending chart on The Economist instagram profile.

In addition to what Rob showed before, it shows history in last almost 50 years, and it indeed confirms what Rob indicated before, that modern USA spending clearly inclines towards spending for the sake of spending and not actual improvements of life expectancy...



https://www.instagram.com/p/Bx4vKDgJGR7/?igshid=tm57f5k833np

Rob Monster said:

For anyone not familiar with the idea, see my Banned TED Talk:

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Banned because…?

Cal2 said:

Banned because…?

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That is a great question. It had a lot of views on the TED channel. Fortunately someone made a backup. I think the content makes a compelling case for how to restore economic sovereignty to local communities. It is a bit long by TED standards, but it covers some important topics.

Rob Monster said:

That is a great question. It had a lot of views on the TED channel. Fortunately someone made a backup. I think the content makes a compelling case for how to restore economic sovereignty to local communities. It is a bit long by TED standards, but it covers some important topics.

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So you never asked? Got no reply? Got run around?

Cal2 said:

So you never asked? Got no reply? Got run around?

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It happened as I was leaving the company as CEO so did not press the issue. The idea of DigitalTown remains compelling. Like "Free speech", most folks don't fully grasp the importance of digital empowerment in the broader sense, including economic. "Winner take all" models in digital commerce has far-reaching implications for communities. The idea that everyone needs to migrate to cities is nonsense. That is the central thrust of the DigitalTown model -- thriving sovereign local economies with global interoperability..

Rob Monster said:

The idea was slightly ahead of its time, though not by much.

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Not quite sure about that, Rob,
There was a lot of 1990s hype in the promotion of it and some elements were innovative. One of the biggest problems that I could see with it was in how it advocated local search without having any understanding of the complexity of building local search engines. (Everyone seems to think that this is easy until they try to build one.) In this respect it was like webmasters about twenty years ago thinking that it was easy to build and monetise local/regional web directories. They did not understand that domain names expire and and websites disappear so that a directory's index becomes stale. With a small and curated index, that problem can easily fixed. However, with local search, there are issues about a stale index and a clean index as unless sites are added manually, most of the spam and low quality sites will have to be cleaned from the public-facing search index. As for the business model, city or town level sites are fine but they have to be backed by relatively large and localised marketing budgets. Just having the "right" domain name in an gTLD or new gTLD certainly won't work well in markets where there is a dominant ccTLD. The dominant ccTLDs have the advantage that the extension is psychologically invisible to the people in that country because it is their ccTLD. As with .COM in the US, they would be more likely to go to $cityname.ccTLD rather than $cityname.town or $cityname.city. It might have worked in the EU prior to 2006 but the bungling of the .EU ccTLD landrush kickstarted the rise of ccTLDs all over the EU.

Regards...jmcc

If anyone was wondering if their YouTube feed had recently gotten more politically correct, you were not really imagining it. Censorship and self-censorship took a great leap forward recently.

Here is the CEO of YouTube clarifying the practice of censoring content that is unpleasant to "protected groups". That is not exactly subtle.


And it is backed up here too:

https://us.tv/UjDaLIq7g2w/

Rob Monster said:

If anyone was wondering if their YouTube feed had recently gotten more politically correct, you were not really imagining it. Censorship and self-censorship took a great leap forward recently.

Here is the CEO of YouTube clarifying the practice of censoring content that is unpleasant to "protected groups". That is not exactly subtle.

And it is backed up here too:

https://us.tv/UjDaLIq7g2w/

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Interesting. Yet, very troubling as well.

She (YouTube CEO) states:

"If there is a video that alleges that some race or religion or gender or group - protected group is superior in some way and uses that to justify discrimination or exclusion that would no longer be allowed on our platform."

The problem is that under that description anything could be censored. It leaves a very large umbrella for censorship. For example under those guidelines many women's rights groups could be censored as there are some groups that imply, and otherwise state, being a female is of superiority. Same issue goes for many other groups that claim superiority for many reasons. Although, I am sure the womens rights groups that claim superiority will not be censored due to the natural bias of YouTube, but that's what you get when there is a bigger agenda.

Disclaimer: I am all for equality. I am not for superiority, which is what many groups that preach "equality" actually are.

Internet.Domains said:

Interesting. Yet, very troubling as well.

She (YouTube CEO) states:

"If there is a video that alleges that some race or religion or gender or group - protected group is superior in some way and uses that to justify discrimination or exclusion that would no longer be allowed on our platform."

The problem is that under that description anything could be censored. It leaves a very large umbrella for censorship. For example under those guidelines many women's rights groups could be censored as there are some groups that imply, and otherwise state, being a female is of superiority. Same issue goes for many other groups that claim superiority for many reasons. Although, I am sure the womens rights groups that claim superiority will not be censored due to the natural bias of YouTube, but that's what you get when there is a bigger agenda.

Disclaimer: I am all for equality. I am not for superiority, which is what many groups that preach "equality" actually are.

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Bingo -- it is all out in the open now. There is no subtlety or denial now but rather an outright declaration that censorship of wrongspeak is an overt and deliberate strategy.

What is also interest is the rise of new social networks to compete with the expected decline of Facebook and similar legacy brands.

Two new entrants this month:

https://parler.com/

http://thinkspot.com/

There are many more on the way as the various challengers to the dynastic monopolies heats up in earnest. The big question is how private equity plays this trend. I think we will see moves soon.

Welcome to the Internet Wild West 2.0.

Whistleblowers are now coming out of the woodworks. Here is an insider tell-all on censorship actions at Pinterest:

https://www.bitchute.com/video/ko43yVdowMU/

More evidence that players in big-tech are:

1. complicit in biased media narratives.

2. increasingly anti-Christian, pro-abortion, and pro-vice.

Whistleblowers are exposing the nonsense on a large and larger scale. Alt-Tech is helping to amplify the competing narratives that draw awareness to the nonsense.

As for the executive branch of the US government, DJT talks a good game but really does not much. Fortunately, low cost tech combined with entrepreneurial chutzpah just might have a fighting chance.

Here is another short but good summary of why and how the Big Tech censorship brigade is moving swiftly and comprehensively to slow the propagation of certain content and ideas.

The video is archived here: https://us.tv/zjKIrvNrGF8/

The vast majority of the content that is being censored is in no way harmful to anyone, but they challenge the neo-Marxist agenda, and therefore it cannot stand.

One giant gap is the search engine market. Nothing competes with Google. Even Duck Duck Go is just using API calls to Bing. The remaining alternative search engines pretty much suck.

Like it or not, the Alt-Tech brigade is working diligently to fill the void that Big Tech is methodically creating by committing to become agenda-driven editors rather than empowering platforms.

Rob Monster said:

Here is another short but good summary of why and how the Big Tech censorship brigade is moving swiftly and comprehensively to slow the propagation of certain content and ideas.

The video is archived here: https://us.tv/zjKIrvNrGF8/

The vast majority of the content that is being censored is in no way harmful to anyone, but they challenge the neo-Marxist agenda, and therefore it cannot stand.

One giant gap is the search engine market. Nothing competes with Google. Even Duck Duck Go is just using API calls to Bing. The remaining alternative search engines pretty much suck.

Like it or not, the Alt-Tech brigade is working diligently to fill the void that Big Tech is methodically creating by committing to become agenda-driven editors rather than empowering platforms.

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The good news is no one or no thing stays on top forever...that is the day I am waiting for..when giggle is no longer at the top.

I've been aware of some very talented people working on new engines and at least one group was bought out...anyone want to guess who paid them big money? Although I was not privy to any inside info, the number was close to being obscene one person told me.

This brings to mind a man I met in Florida sooooo many years ago when I left college to start my marketing company (a dart tossed at a map determined where we would start). He was one of my first customers and took me into his confidence...one day he let me visit his home and his personal office. The first thing I noticed were all the patent awards on the walls. He had patents on batteries, tires, automated flagpoles, etc. and I commented that it was no surprise he lived in such a paradise. He became sad and talked about how he had sold his soul to the devil. It turns out he never developed any of the products/processes he designed/invented...he sold them to large corporations instead. Knowing he would not live much longer, he said he could have done without the yachts, houses, cars and brought the inventions to market himself. All the wonderful things he came up with to improve humans lives and save them money had been shelved in the name of corporate profit. It would do an automotive battery manufacturer no good to install a battery that would last 20 years in a new car...that takes out recurring revenue.

No idea. What kind of engine was bought out?

Cal2 said:

No idea. What kind of engine was bought out?

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I called it an engine...like askjeeves, mamma, hotbot...and it never had a name (other than code name). Just some really smart dudes and dudettes that were/are talented coders. I think that 'buyouts' like this happen often in the industrial world as well as in the digital realm.

Cal2 said:

Any info you can make available to find the filed patents? If it was so long ago, those patents should've expired and be available for anyone to use(?) (I've got a good battery .com domain name waiting to be used for something.)

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No idea about patent numbers...one was for a battery that had a 20 year life...one was for tires that would last 100,000 miles, the other was for a flag pole that could sense darkness/moisture and retract the flag automatically and deploy when conditions were right. These are just 3 I recall...oh yeah, he had one for an anchor...think I still have the one he gave me. This was back in early 80's...I'm sure he passed before 85.

Earlier today, a popular YouTuber named "Black Pigeon Speaks" was abruptly deleted by YouTube. He had ~500,000 subscribers and was known for his high production quality content.

For anyone who wonders if this is some Christian white nationalist thing, I think the reaction of this particular commentator speaks volumes:


Truth has no race. Truth has no ethnicity. Truth has no religion. Truth is absolute and it is your sovereign right to search it out. Anyone who challenges that right is not your friend.

wormfood said:

p

Why Women DESTROY NATIONS * /CIVILIZATIONS and other UNCOMFORTABLE TRUTHS (BlackPigeonSpeaks Mirror)

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what the fuck
10:05
"MSNBC: More than 87% of women experience orgasm during RAPE"

black devil speaks

what a crock of shit

wormfood said:

it's already back lol you can stop crying now https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmrLCXSDScliR7q8AxxjvXg

seems some videos were taken down a couple years ago, so another account put them up

Why Women DESTROY NATIONS * /CIVILIZATIONS and other UNCOMFORTABLE TRUTHS (BlackPigeonSpeaks Mirror)

Creeping Sharia: The ISLAMIZATION of the WEST

Black Lives Matter: The Rise of the "DINDU"
"Ferguson just a couple of decades ago used to be a very nice place to raise families, and then it became what it is today. Fixing the rot in the African-American community should be a national priority for all Americans, as its dysfunction spills out upon all others and ultimately drives all others away, leaving the husks of formerly great cities to rot."

The Transgender: Normalizing MENTAL ILLNESS

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@wormfood

I am not condoning his content carte blanche. I was calling out YouTube for the overt pivot from being a de facto industry utility for video distribution, to being a publisher with editorial privilege.

In rebutting my post, I realize it is convenient to focus the conversation on the specific narratives, some of which are likely inflammatory to certain audiences. However, that is really not the point here.

The meat of the issue is the march towards censorship, where prescribed narratives are amplified and competing or contradictory narratives are silenced or redirected. This is a form of mind control.

That said, I do think Caitlyn Jenner is indeed confused. The transition has been used as a media tool to mainstream Trans as a gender choice, whether he/she which wishes to acknowledge it or not. Just
30 years ago, homosexuality was classified as a psychological disorder. There are many references for anyone not old enough to not know this to be the case. For example:

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/...n-homosexuality-stopped-being-mental-disorder

So, fast forward to 2019, now we mainstream pedophilia, necrophilia, incest, infanticide, and bestiality, with some courts now deeming it to be lawful and therefore presumably appropriate to teach children in public schools about content that is not just nonsense, but soul-trashing nonsense:

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/...lity-legal-canada-supreme-court-a7073196.html

You don't have to agree with Black Pigeon Speaks to appreciate that there are courageous and capable people who are willing to present competing narratives with high production quality. That's the point.

Rob Monster said:

I was calling out YouTube for the overt pivot from being a de facto industry utility for video distribution, to being a publisher with editorial privilege.

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they're a platform with rules
if you don't like the rules, you tell them and/or leave
so what?

wormfood said:

they're a platform with rules
if you don't like the rules, you tell them and/or leave
so what?

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That is what is happening -- people are leaving, and competing platforms are emerging. However, the transition is gradual and most folks will not be clued into the degree to which the sanitized YouTube is now a tool of biased propagandists with an agenda. This can obviously be discerned by watching the video of Susan Wojcicki, CEO of YouTube, referenced above.

Rob Monster said:

The meat of the issue is the march towards censorship, where prescribed narratives are amplified and competing or contradictory narratives are silenced or redirected. This is a form of mind control.

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youtube is mind-bogglingly large. people can search for whatever they want, and they'll probably find something that satisfies them.
there's no mind control going on.

if I watch some stupid alt-right video, I might get recommendations from that channel or similar ones for a while. but sure, it's so biased and a form of mind control.

if I search for anti-vaccine conspiracies, conservatives, religious fundamentalists.... I can find a lot of crap to watch. nothing's getting in my way. but sure, they're really getting a hold on my mind.

they want you to keep watching, so they're going to keep recommending things that you like. what you like is up to you.

sensationalist bs spreads easily, so of course there's always someone wailing about censorship to draw attention or promote their new "free speech" platform or make out others as big bad bullies to score political points.

Rob Monster said:

sanitized YouTube is now a tool of biased propagandists with an agenda.

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right. that's a real threat. one of the largest websites on earth is being used by "propagandists" to promote a few viewpoints.... most people are so stupid that they'll just go on a website with billions of hours of video and instead of choosing things they really want to watch, they'll mindlessly eat up a stream of "propaganda" from the evil youtube overseers' imaginary propaganda algorithm.

wormfood said:

youtube is mind-bogglingly large. people can search for whatever they want, and they'll probably find something that satisfies them.
there's no mind control going on.

if I watch some stupid alt-right video, I might get recommendations from that channel or similar ones for a while. but sure, it's so biased and a form of mind control.

if I search for anti-vaccine conspiracies, conservatives, religious fundamentalists.... I can find a lot of crap to watch. nothing's getting in my way. but sure, they're really getting a hold on my mind.

they want you to keep watching, so they're going to keep recommending things that you like. what you like is up to you.

sensationalist bs spreads easily, so of course there's always someone wailing about censorship to draw attention or promote their new "free speech" platform or make out others as big bad bullies to score political points.


right. that's a real threat. one of the largest websites on earth is being used by "propagandists" to promote a few viewpoints.... most people are so stupid that they'll just go on a website with billions of hours of video and instead of choosing things they really want to watch, they'll mindlessly eat up a stream of "propaganda" from the evil youtube overseers' imaginary propaganda algorithm.

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If YouTube was a business, it would maximize content, maximize dwell time, and maximize revenue.

Instead, YouTube now deplatforms, shadow bans, and demonetizes.

I am not sure how you justify being an apologist for censorship, but so be it. We'll agree to disagree.

daily wire 1.5 million subscribers
lauren southern 700,000 subscribers
steven crowder 3.9 million subscribers
milo yiannopoulos 860,000 subscribers
your dumb pigeon guy was reinstated the day of

keep playing the victim

wormfood said:

daily wire 1.5 million subscribers
lauren southern 700,000 subscribers
steven crowder 3.9 million subscribers
milo yiannopoulos 860,000 subscribers
your dumb pigeon guy was reinstated the day of

keep playing the victim

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Black Pigeon Speaks was apparently JUST reinstated. That is no doubt the direct result of public outcry against ridiculous overreach by the censors. So, yes, that is a win for free speech, thank you.

As for being a victim, that label really does not fit here. I can think of better descriptions, e.g. humanitarian, patriot, truthseeker, evangelist, and advocate for civil liberties and sovereignty are closer to the mark.