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Members of the alt-rightare uniting against Google after it fired an engineer for writing what many media outlets are calling an anti-diversity manifesto. The document sparked outrage in Silicon Valley for claiming that biological differencesnot discriminationare the reason so few women have tech jobs.

Scattered throughout the 10-page memo are references to Googles left leaning political biases. James Damore, the author of Googles Ideological Echo Chamber memo, claims Google operates on a deep moral bias founded on its leftist political orientation. Googles left bias has created a politically correct monoculture that maintains its hold by shaming dissenters into silence, he wrote.

This sentiment appears to have struck a cord with members of the alt-right, who feel Damores dismissal was unjust and politically driven. They are now flocking to Twitter to call for a ban against Google.

But outraged critics hoping to ban the tech giant face a difficult truth: Banning Google is like banning the interneta nearly impossible task, as some have already acknowledged.

Almost everyone in the United States uses one of Googles products on a daily basis, but it isnt until you consolidate its services that you recognize the companys remarkable digital footprint.

Lets begin with the heavy-hitters: Google Chrome and Google Search. Chrome is the most used web browsing service in the world, with just short of 60 percent of the desktop market share. It also tops numerous best web browsers charts for its stability and presentation. Even then, Chrome isnt the most difficult Google service to replace. There are a number of good alternatives out therein fact, many wont push your computer as hard as Chromebut youd be hard-pressed to find a faster and simpler platform for navigating the web.

Google Search (Google.com), on the other hand, is in a league of its own, garnishing more than 90 percent of all web search traffic. The truth (for most people) is that alternatives like Bing and Yahoo wont provide results as relevant as those presented by the de facto industry leader.

If you really wanted to ban Google, you could sacrifice convenience and use alternative search and web browsing services. But youd only have dipped your toes in the deep pool that fills Googles online presence.

To truly ban Google, youll also need to stop using Google Maps, the clear front-runner when it comes to navigation apps. And no, Waze wont dothats also owned by Google. Oh, and youll need to step out of the International Space Station to get away from Google Earth, a rather niche program, but one that is nonetheless difficult to replace.

At this point, youll have to transfer to arguably inferior web browsing and search services, and a good alternative to Google Maps that isnt Waze. All that and youll still have to handle two more powerhouse Google services: YouTube and Gmail.

There is simply no replacement for YouTube (and its female CEO). Sure, there are alternatives, but nothing comes close to the largest video platform, and a breeding ground for internet culture. According to Statista, YouTube owns 78.8 percent of the market share for multimedia sites, followed by Netflix and Hulutwo video streaming sites that dont step into YouTube territory. Its closest competitor, Bing Videos (yes, Bing Videos), owns less than 1 percent of the market share and doesnt come near YouTubes more than 1 billion monthly active users (or a third of the internet). Similarly, Gmail dominates the email client market share, falling only to the iPhone client, which youll presumably use once youve tossed out your Android devices.

Other useful Google services youd be sacrificing include Google Flights, Drive, News, and Shopping, along with Hangouts instant messaging and the excellent Google Translate.

But banning Google could also mean a living room makeover. If you own a Sony, Sharp, or Philips smart TV, it may come with Googles Android TV OS. If you dont, there is still a good chance your TV has Googles Chromecast built-in. The company has also released its own hardware over the last few years, including Chromecast devices, the Google Home smart speaker, and Google WiFi/OnHub routers. Finally, youll need a new way to adjust the temperature of your home. Alphabet, Googles parent company, owns Nest, best known for its popular smart thermostats.

Simply put, Google products touch every corner of the internet, even before accounting for its ad presence and partnerships. Thats not to say banning Google is impossibleyoull just need to accept that doing so means getting rid of pieces of the internet that make the internet so appealing.

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Sorry alt-right dudes, but #BoycottGoogle is more complicated than you think - The Daily Dot

Google has fired the employee that wrote a widely criticized memo suggesting that "biological differences" are the reason why there are so few women leaders in the tech industry. The tech giant's decision sparked outrage on social media, with Wikileaks founder Julian Assange andalt-right media outlets claiming the company was censoringJames Damore, the sofware engineer behind the leaked memo.

The 28-year-old had been working at the company since 2013 after achieving a PhD in systems biology from Harvard University, according to his social media profiles. He claimed he was fired in an email to far right news website Breitbart: They just fired me for perpetuating gender stereotypes, he wrote.

His 10-page document started circulating among Google employees on Friday and was first reported by tech news website Motherboard before being published in full byGizmodo.

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Several paragraphs in the document advanced old-fashioned ideas linked to biological determinism,reinforcing traditional gender roles. Women, on average, have more neuroticism, read one of the bullet points aiming to explain how the gender gap in the tech industry arises.

If we, as a society, allow men to be more feminine, then the gender gap will shrink, although probably because men will leave tech and leadership for traditionally feminine roles, another one of the software engineers observations read.

Participants hold up a Google banner during Berlin's annual Christopher Street Day (CSD) gay pride parade on July 22, 2017. The tech giant fired employee James Damore who authored a memo advancing gender stereotypes that violated the company's Code of Conduct. John Macdougall/AFP/Getty Images

Damores name began trending on Twitter on Monday night following the news of his dismissal, with conservative and alt-right commentators condemning Googles decisions. Breitbart led its site Tuesday with severalarticles on the firing; onefeatured a picture of a face, the mouth gagged with tape, with the word silenced written across it. In some memes shared on Twitter, the "Google" logo was rearrange to spell "Goolag", meant to associate the tech giant with Soviet Russia's "gulag"prison camps.

Conservative commentator Ben Shapiro dubbed Googles managers corporate fascists and the tech giant a leftist monopoly and, in one of several tweets about the issue, suggested Damore should immediately declare himself a woman and sue Google for discrimination based on gender stereotypes.

Eric Weinstein, managing director of Peter Theils investment firm Thiel Capital, wrote a widely shared tweet to Google asking the company to stop teaching my girl that her path to financial freedom lies not in coding but in complaining to HR.

Damore is now reviewing his options for legal action against Google,as reported on the alt-right crowdfunding platform WeSearchr, which set up a fundraiser for the software engineer, on his behalf at his request.At the time of writing, 24 people had pledged donations worth a combined $1,644, out a total $60,000 target. Some of the anonymous contributors pledged as much as $300, with some calling Damore an American hero and an inspiration.

Damore may not be out of work for long, though. Wikileaks founder Julian Assange tweeted Tuesday morning: "Censorship is for losers. @WikiLeaks is offering a job to fired Google engineer James Damore." He also used the opportunity to promote his 2014 book on Google.

According to Google, Damores memo was in breach of the companys rules. In a statement to employees quoted in Bloomberg, Google CEO Sundar Pichai said parts of the document violate our Code of Conduct and cross the line by advancing harmful gender stereotypes in our workplace.

Google's recently hired vice president of diversity, integrity and governance, Danielle Brown, also described the essay as advancing incorrect assumptions about gender."

"Part of building an open, inclusive environment means fostering a culture in which those with alternative views, including different political views, feel safe sharing their opinions," Brown wrote. "But that discourse needs to work alongside the principles of equal employment found in our Code of Conduct, policies, and anti-discrimination laws.

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Who is James Damore? Alt-Right Furious After Google Fires Engineer Over Anti-Diversity Memo - Newsweek

Lock and load... Bruce Willis in Death Wish. Photograph: MGM

There is a long and fine tradition of pointing out that Eli Roths new films dont look very good. The cocksure writer, director, producer and sometime actor has spent the last 15 years serving up reliably polarising product from the gloomy, insidious torture-porn of Hostel to the garish sexpot thriller Knock Knock. Roths latest and most high-profile project a long-in-the-works resurrection of the Death Wish franchise with Bruce Willis as the trigger-happy lead has attracted even sharper criticism than usual. The launch trailer has sustained heavy fire on social media, called out for being nakedly fascist and being compared to alt-right fan fiction.

To mix animal metaphors, the trailer does make the rebooted Death Wish look like a depressing frog chorus of alt-right dog whistles. The setting has been shifted from New York to Chicago, a city currently struggling in real life to cope with a resurgent murder rate while being attacked by Donald Trump on a weekly basis. The alt-right like to paint the USs third largest city as an urban hellscape overrun by predominantly black gangs fighting for turf. Purists might point to the fact that the new films location is paying tribute to Michael Winners 1974 original, which ends with Charles Bronson arriving at Chicagos Union Station to continue his vigilante campaign. By fully setting their remake in Chicago, however, Roth and his producers are wading into real-life racial tensions (while filming mostly in Montreal).

The remake appears to stick to the man-on-the-edge premise of the original. Willis plays an affluent, middle-aged surgeon whose wife and daughter are victims of a savage home invasion. With the cops and courts seemingly incapable of punishing the perpetrators, Willis swaps scrubs for a hoodie to enforce his own brand of guerrilla justice, torturing low-life criminals in pursuit of information, gunning down a black drug dealer in broad daylight and, it is implied, becoming a folk hero in the process.

You might suppose that a film about a medical professional so psychologically upended by anger and grief that they become a murderer could be the basis for a thought-provoking meditation on how we construct our own morality in a volatile world. Roths film, judging by its trailer, chooses to go in a rather different direction, with Willis quipping his way through a montage of violent kills over an AC/DC soundtrack. The strutting Back in Black is prominent on the soundtrack of Iron Man, and the suggestion seems to be that, like libertarian billionaire Tony Stark, Willis Paul Kersey is a maverick hero with no time for liberal hand-wringers. Roth initially seemed happy to stoke the flames, promoting the trailer with some macho lock and load talk and the social justice warrior baiting #triggerwarning hashtag.

Could Roth deliberately be courting the alt-right dollar? His 2015 jungle cannibal movie The Green Inferno received some unexpectedly admiring notices from pro-Trump publisher Breitbart, who seemed tickled that the gnawed-on victims were students whose conservation activism was a pose. But despite his crass creative impulses and glib comments, Roth is an unlikely cheerleader for the alt-right. He makes a searing screen appearance in Quentin Tarantinos Inglourious Basterds as Donny Donowitz, a second world war soldier who goes a little further than just punching Nazis. The formidable Bear Jew specialises in clubbing them to death with a baseball bat.

In truth, Roth seems more of an equal opportunities controversialist who views himself as a gonzo cinematic provocateur rather than propagandist. When recently confronted about the Death Wish reaction, he claimed to be proud of the final product. When people see the movie in context I think this [controversy] is all going to evaporate, he said. Like the Rambo franchise, the original Death Wish series began with downbeat, thorny, unsettling films before rapidly becoming exaggerated cartoons. Judging by the way Willis jokes and smirks in the trailer, Roth seems to have internalised the spirit of the 1980s sequels, citing Death Wish 3 as a key inspiration. That was the one where lethal architect Charles Bronson returned to New York City which looked suspiciously like London and ended up taking out punks with silly Home Alone-style booby traps.

Irrespective of Roths intentions, Death Wish still seems likely to be embraced by right-wing activists in the run-up to its November release, if only because it has already enraged so many liberal commentators. In the alt-rights culture war, opportunistic points-scoring is more useful than cogent debate, and anything that draws fire from snowflakes is seen as good. That this latest ammunition has come from Hollywood itself traditionally a liberal stronghold will make it all the more appealing to dudes who fantasise about white men taking charge through violence.

Still, at least Roth can claim to have honoured the original Death Wish in his own weird way. The Michael Winner original was also greeted as dangerously right-wing agitprop in 1974, which the New York Times called a bird-brained movie to cheer the hearts of the far-right wing.

Link:
Death Wish: is the Bruce Willis remake an alt-right fantasy? | Film ... - The Guardian (blog)

The Weekly Standardwhich though conservative is largely a #NeverTrump publicationhas a nice overview Monday of the right-wing/alt-right campaign against national security adviser H.R. McMaster. (McMasterhas earned the ire of the internet's hard-line Trump enthusiasts by firing the conspiracy theorists and cranks who were inserted at the National Security Council by Steve Bannon and Michael Flynn before McMaster took over. To wit, see last month's dismissal of a "strategic planning" official named Rich Higgins who wrote in an internal memo that "Islamists" have formed an alliance with American "cultural Marxists" to create a "Maoist insurgency" and "counter-state" within the U.S. via the deployment of "coordinated synchronized interactive narratives." Interesting stuff, Rich!) One bit in particular is worth examining in more detail: Breitbart's promotion of a hot scoop that connects McMaster to George Soros.

The takeaway of this attack post is that McMaster was once affiliated with a mainstream national security think tank called the International Institute for Strategic Studies, which received some nonsecret funding from the Ploughshares Fund. In turn, the Ploughshares Fund's donors include George Soros. Now, in Reality World, Soros is a billionaire who donates in transparent ways to groups that, while left-leaning, are not particularly radical: Other donors to the Ploughshares Fund include such stalwarts of establishment philanthropy as the Ford Foundation and Rockefeller Foundation, and Soros' connection to Ploughshares is not a secret. In Alt-Right Conspiracy World, though, Soros is the sinister manifestation of scheming international "globalism" who personally pays every Trump protester on behalf of ISIS, and his tenuous link to McMaster thus renders the national security adviser immediately suspect.

McMaster's nemesis Steve Bannon, of course, used to be Breitbart's chairman, and the site has long been a key cog in the Soros-hysteria machine. After Bannon joined the Trump campaign, he supervised the release of an ad in which Soros was pictured prominently alongside two other Jewish finance figures (Janet Yellen and Lloyd Blankfein) as a narrator spoke ominouslyabout the "global special interests" who have "robbed our working class" and "stripped our country of its wealth." Bannon has also helped Trump cultivate the support ofthe kinds of white supremacists and neo-Nazis who complain about the "Jewish influence," illustrate meme images with swastikas, and highlight the names of Jewish individuals such as Soros by putting brackets around them. On a personal level, Bannon allegedly once told his now-ex-wife that he didn't want his daughters attending a school with significant Jewish enrollment. So it makes sense that Breitbart, in an attempt to do a solid for its man in the White House, would think that the worst thing it could possibly reveal about H.R. McMaster is that he has a thirdhand connection to a Jewish guy. Devastating!

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Alt-right links H.R. McMaster to George Soros. - Slate Magazine (blog)

Avoiding politics online is nearly impossible. But what happens when your quest to remain neutral draws you deep into a firestorm between two of the most aggressive political factions of the Trump era?

Late last month, fundraising platform Patreon found out.

Patreon markets itself as the prime way for independent creators to come get paid, as its website reads. Its users span the full gamut of disciplines, from video makers to educators to podcasters and everyone in between. If you like a certain writer, for example, Patreon enables you to kick her a few bucks for her efforts. For some successful Patreon users, the platform provides a substantial income.

The concept of Patreon is noncontroversial in the era of crowdfunding. But that all changes when you mix money and take-no-prisoners politics.

The company found itself in the middle of a hyperpartisan showdown between warring entities in thealt-right and the far left anti-fascist movement known as Antifa. However, it wasPatreons efforts to remain outside the fray of politics that brought the fighting to a head.

The events that followed serve as either a warning to any company that attempts to navigate the murky, shark-filled waters of internet politicsor a model for how to use transparency as a weapon.

On July 20, without explanation, the company banned conservative provocateur Lauren Southern from the platform, cutting off valuable monthly donations from supporters and sparking a fierce backlash from mainly right-wing circles and alternative media outlets.

Hundreds of patrons and several creators abandoned the platform as a result, including scientist and podcaster Sam Harris, one of the most popular creators on the service.

One week later, on July 28, the company abruptly shut down the account offar-left news website Its Going Down (IGD). The outlet, which has become loosely associated with the re-emergent Antifa movement since PresidentDonald Trumps inauguration, had publishedarticlescovering Southerns activities amid its usual content, which is regularly re-posted anonymously from a range of anarchist and anti-capitalist groups.

In a 10-minute long video, published just hours after IGD was notified of its ban, Patreons chief executive defended Southerns account shutdownover which there had already been considerable falloutand explained the companys evaluation method called manifest observable behavior.

The purpose of using manifest observable behavior is to remove personal values and beliefs when the team is reviewing content. Its a review method thats based entirely on observable facts, Jack Conte, Patreons CEO, said.

Southerns ban, Conte said, came through her involvement with right-wing youth organization Gnration Identitaires Defend Europe project. Defend Europe was a crowdfunded mission to intercept boats filled with migrants journeying across the Mediterranean to Europe and to transport migrants back to their home countries in North Africa.

We removed [Southern and Defend Europes] pages because they directly obstructed a search-and-rescue ship in the Mediterranean, and they made a variety of statements and outlined plans to obstruct similar rescue ships in the future, Conte said, reasoning that this could endanger the lives.

Following the ban, Southern denied she was personally involved in the mission. In his response video above, Conte listed the observable facts that his evaluation team had cited. These included using some of Southerns own footage, in which she can be heard directing the Defend Europe boat operator to block the NGO rescue ship, and quoted statements Southern made in which she appears to speak and identify as part of the Defend Europe team.

None of these details were apparent in Southerns original response to Patreon banning her. Conte, in other words, decided to call her out.

You cant use manifest observable behavior to say who someone is you can use manifest observable behavior to say what someone did or didnt do and whether or not those things are or are not against your content policy, Conte concluded, reiterating that it was Southerns observable actions, not her politics, that had landed her in trouble with the platform.

Conte then broke the news that, hours earlier, Patreon had taken the same action against IGD, an organization at the opposite end of the political spectrum from Southernone that has also been actively critical of her work and politics.

Again, Conte pointed to observable and available content as violations of the companys content policy. The evidence against IGD consisted of two articles that were reposted on the leftist website, which unapologetically states its mission is the promotion of both revolutionary theory and action. One article featured an instance of doxxingthe publishing of an individuals personally identifiable informationand another instructed readers on how to sabotage a railway line.

Likely anticipating accusations of cutting off IGD as a way to appear politically neutral, Conte said the website had been flagged for review before Patreon banned Southern.

We dont batch pages together and take down opposing pages at exactly the same time to proactively seem like were being fair, Conte said. He added: When we removed Southerns page, IGDs page had already come to our attention from a number of inbound reports and was already in our queue.

Contes attempts to pull Patreon out of the snake pit of politics failed. After IGDs ban, some on the far left, who cheered at Southerns banning, accused Patreon of pandering to and working with the alt-right.

IGD was banned as an act of appeasement to the alt-right, IGDs editors asserted in a comprehensive post, which points to a sustained and coordinated call by alt-right media outlets and personalities to have its funding cut off. Behind the gimmicks and wonky terms about manifest observable behavior, the entirety of Contes video is an attempt to pacify the trolls.

On the right, disgruntled Southern supporters had taken to calling out Patreon on social media and blogs for what they believed to be a politically biased judgment.

To Southerns supporters, Patreon had stifled free speech in the name of the left; to IGD supporters, the company had sought to placate angry alt-right trolls in banning their outlet.

Although motivated by transparency over its decisions and ethical boundaries, the company had become a villain to both the extreme left and right. In fact, parties on both sides made Patreon a political battleground for its attempts to remain politically neutral.

Both Southern and IGD came to Patreons attention because of a number of inbound reports, according to Conte, which activists on both left and right utilized as a way of attacking one another. While left-wing activists ran a#DefundDefendEuropecampaign targeting Southern, alt-right activists were pushing a #DefundAntifa campaign aimed at IGD.

Self-described Antifa organization Hope Not Hate celebrated the closure of Southerns account as its own victory. In ablog articleonits websitedated July 21, theorganization states that it lobbied forSoutherns account to be removed from the platform.

The banning, it said, came after several weeks of lobbying by Hope Not Hate, which contacted Patreon to raise concerns about far-right activists making money via the service. Hope Not Hate also claimed that the sustained and effective#DefundDefendEuropecampaign resulted in the shutdown of Defend Europes bank and PayPal accounts.

Southerna 22-year-old Canadian who regularlycovers or discusses issues like the nightmare of mass immigration and condemns liberal versions of feminismseems an obvious target for her political opponents on the left.When Conte was asked on a recent episode of theRubin Reportabout Hope Not Hate taking creditfor Southern beingkicked out, however, heexplained that the only lobbying process was via the reporting system.

We dont actively policethecommunity, Conte said. The reason that a page gets taken down is becausewe get reports through an official reporting system If they sent in a report, then we evaluated that report.

Hate Not Hope did not respond to the Daily Dots request to clarify whether it used this reporting process tobring Southern to Patreons attention.

Just as Hate Not Hope was gunning for Southern, however, an undergroundalt-rightcampaign to have IGDs account shutdown began in earnest.

The anti-IGD effort appears to have started back in June, onemonth afterthe outletjoined the platform.

Alt-right activists on social aggregator Voat, a Reddit alternative offering no moderation and unbridled free speech, were called upon to bombard Patreonin a coordinated mass reporting of the IGD profile page.

Amysterious Voat user, a87d7sasa97h9, laid out in detail the plan in Voats Antifa subverse.

Explain that Its Going Down is an Antifa website, the instigating userwrote at the time. Include evidence of Antifas violent crimes to convince Patreon that Antifa is a terrorist organization. If enough people report this page, Patreon may shut it down and cut off some of Antifas funding. Every bit helps.

An email template that would-be participants could simply copy and submit to Patreon pitsIGD content against specific creator obligations stipulated in the Patreon content policy. Their most substantial weapon against IGD wasFox News negative coverage of IGD, which it said calls for violence against Trump supporters.

Fox News has exposed Its Going Down, a87d7sasa97h9 wrote in an update, use this as your primary evidence when reporting the Patreon page.

The account behind the effort, which was used exclusively to push other users to participate, has since fallen inactive. Its impossible to tell who was behind the seemingly random string of letters and numbers, whose mostimpassioned and lengthy postis suitably on the topic of maintaining online anonymity and security.

As the narrative consolidated in the Voat post was parroted byalt-right media outlets, alt-right activists were hard at work stacking up complaints and reports against IGD with Patreon when Contes video went live on July 28.

On discovery of the campaign, the Daily Dot contacted Patreon to request data relating to how and when the company was made aware of the IGD content, but a spokesperson refused to share the information.

The team at Patreon strongly believes in building a platform that prioritizes free speech and celebrates diverse viewpoints, a spokesperson told the Daily Dot. We do not take the possibility of removing creators lightly. We have a thorough content policy and evaluation process, and removing a creator is something we only consider after very careful review.

In the end, Patreon stands by its assessment in both cases, judging that the content of each creator had clearly fallen outside its boundary of mainstream acceptability. So, while its unclear just how much impact the spamming had, the subversive tactics employed by each group to quell the other ended in both being banished back to the fringes.

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How Patreon stepped into a war between Antifa and the alt-right - The Daily Dot