Ello -The Facebook Killer?

September 26, 2014 (Tony Cartalucci - LocalOrg) - Ello, a social network alternative to Facebook is expanding its user base immensely, even as it remains in beta testing. Market watchers and tech trend analysts attribute the influx of users indicative of Facebook's waning popularity due to its invasive, profit-driven, monopolistic, and downright creepy conduct. 

Facebook's incremental, manipulative policy and terms of use have been described as everything from a greedy business practice, to a government sanctioned means of mass manipulation and soft censorship.

It was inevitable that start-ups and activists would seek to offer Facebook users an alternative that allowed social media to be used as a tool of empowerment, not insidious manipulation and censorship. Ello appears to be tapping into that with its manifesto which states:

Your social network is owned by advertisers.

Every post you share, every friend you make and every link you follow is tracked, recorded and converted into data. Advertisers buy your data so they can show you more ads. You are the product that’s bought and sold.

We believe there is a better way. We believe in audacity. We believe in beauty, simplicity and transparency. We believe that the people who make things and the people who use them should be in partnership.

We believe a social network can be a tool for empowerment. Not a tool to deceive, coerce and manipulate — but a place to connect, create and celebrate life.
You are not a product.

In theory, not only does Ello's manifesto sound ideal, it is likely to attract a multitude of disillusioned Facebook users fed up with the big-tech's monopoly, but who have stayed aboard for a lack of a better alternative.

NDItech: In Bed with CISPA Sponsors, Seeks Hacktivists to Spread Corporate Fascism Worldwide

Seeking to co-opt the tech community, NDItech opens doors and taxpayers' pocketbooks to lure in talent. 

Image: A visual representation of the corporate-financier interests represented on the National Endowment for Democracy's (NED) board of directors. NDItech falls under the umbrella of NED. While NED and NDItech pose as fighting for "democracy," their corporate-financier interests lie poorly disguised just beneath the surface. Surely Goldman Sachs, Exxon, and the SOPA-sponsoring US Chamber of Commerce don't care about democracy or freedom - on the Internet or elsewhere. 

....

May 1, 2013 (LD) - The National Democratic Institute (NDI) is one of many tentacles descending from the US State Department and its National Endowment for Democracy (NED) front. Despite NED and NDI's lofty mission statements about "promoting democracy worldwide," the interests they represent are clearly those of the Fortune 500, including big-oil, retail, media, banking, and defense. This convergence of corporate-financier interests pervade the US government from the top, via corporate-funded policy think tanks that direct US policy at home and abroad, and out the bottom through corporate-chaired and funded NGOs that oversee the execution of this policy.

NED, for example includes the following directors:

William Galston: Brookings Institution (board of trustees can be found on page 35 here).
Moises Naim: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (corporate funding here).
Robert Miller: corporate lawyer.
Larry Liebenow: US Chamber of Commerce (a chief proponent of SOPA, ACTA, and CISPA), Center for International Private Enterprise (CIPE).
Anne-Marie Slaughter: US State Department, Council on Foreign Relations (corporate members here), director of Citigroup, McDonald's Corporation, and Political Strategies Advisory Group.
Richard Gephardt: US Representative, Boeing lobbyist, Goldman Sachs, Visa, Ameren Corp, and Waste Management Inc lobbyist, corporate consultant, consultant & now director of Ford Motor Company, supporter of the military invasion and occupation of Iraq in 2003.
Marilyn Carlson Nelson: CEO of Carlson, director of Exxon Mobil.
Stephen Sestanovich: US State Department, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, CFR.
Judy Shelton: director of Hilton Hotels Corporation & Atlantic Coast Airlines.

Does Boeing, Goldman Sachs, Exxon, and the SOPA, ACTA, CISPA-sponsoring US Chamber of Commerce care about promoting democracy abroad? Or in expanding their corporate-financier interests under the guise of promoting democracy? Clearly the latter. 

Fighting Back Against the "Intellectual Property" Racket

Aaron Swartz protesting SOPA. (Demand Progress)

January 13, 2013 (LocalOrg/Tony Cartalucci) - In your standard dictatorship, activists are brought out back and shot.

In the United States' crypto-dictatorship, activists are bullied by the state until they go bankrupt, are buried under a mountain of legal woes, are publicly discredited or humiliated, or as in the case of activist and Reddit co-founder Aaron Swartz, made to crack under the constant pressure, and commit suicide.

While superficially the United States may seem more progressive, a dead activist bullied to death for his political views, is a dead activist - whether it was a bullet in the back of the head by SS officers, or a mountain of litigation dumped upon someone by the US Department of Justice.

We are All Aaron Swartz.

Swartz was an active opponent of the media industry's various assaults on Internet freedom and sharing, including the scandalous SOPA/PIPA and ACTA bills. He was the director of Demand Progress, which pursued the following campaigns:

1. Congress Wants To Make Streaming A Felony

The big business lobbyists who are behind the Internet Blacklist Bill are already making the sequel. The “Ten Strikes” bill would make it a felony to stream copyrighted content — like music in the background of a Youtube video, movies and TV shows — more than ten times.

Click here to read the text of the bill and voice your opposition.

Sharing is Not a Crime: A Battle Plan to Fight Back

December 7, 2012 (LocalOrg) - The Battlefield: Christopher Dodd was at one point an alleged elected representative of the people. As a US Senator he was charged with upholding the Constitution and laws of the people, and representing the interests of voters in his state of Connecticut - for 30 years. In reality, Dodd didn't represent the people, and instead, represents corporate special-interests - and unfortunately, Dodd is not the exception.

In early 2011, it was announced that Dodd - after retiring from 30 years in the Senate - would take up a leading role at the Motion Pictures Association of America (MPAA) for a $1.5 million annual salary. Immediately, the retired Senator would lead the charge to pass the notorious Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), with his incestuous business-government ties visibly rippling through the US House and Senate as well as through the corporate-dominated media.
 

Despite the obvious conflict of interests and dangerous precedent set by corporations commandeering elected representatives to leverage their influence and bend the law of the people to the will of big corporations, Dodd has been allowed to continue on with the charade. It was recently reported in Wired's article, "Hollywood’s Total Piracy Awareness Program Set for January Launch," that: