Digital Service Dumpster Fires and Shadow Work

Digital Service Dumpster Fires and Shadow WorkCharles Hugh Smith – Let’s look at a day-to-day reality that is so ubiquitous it doesn’t attract the attention it deserves:

Digital services–the foundation of the digital economy–are dumpster fires we’re supposed to put out ourselves. The services are broken, dysfunctional rubbish, and yet somehow the agencies or corporations that are responsible for the endless dumpster fires of their digital interfaces have shifted the burdens of this incompetence onto the consumer / customer, who is supposed to put the fire out ourselves and make do with the smoldering sludge at the bottom of the dumpster. Continue reading

Reasons Why E-commerce Accounting is Challenging

eCommerce businessIf you’ve newly started your eCommerce business and wondering whether you can handle the accounts on your own or not, then today’s article is for you. Ecommerce accounting can be challenging, and there could be no exception for experienced people running their eCommerce business for a while and find handling sales more complex than their expectations.

The result of all these situations is complicated accounting. We’re going to discuss the challenges faced by people dealing with eCommerce accounting and how it is more challenging than other industries. Continue reading

Tech-Terrorism

googleBrooks Agnew – Former United States President Barack Obama is denouncing conservative media as “the single biggest threat to our democracy.” In his most recent effort to increase governmental control over news and technology companies, Mr. Obama contended that Facebook, Twitter and other media platforms needed to use stronger censorship to stop conservatives from spreading “crazy lies and conspiracy theories.”

“The First Amendment doesn’t require private companies to provide a platform for any view that is out there,” Mr. Obama told the Atlantic on Nov. 11, 2020. “At the end of the day, we’re going to have to find a combination of government regulations and corporate practices that address this, because it’s going to get worse. … If we do not have the capacity to distinguish what’s true from what’s false, then by definition the marketplace of ideas doesn’t work. And by definition our democracy doesn’t work.” Continue reading

Parler CEO John Matze Discusses Deplatforming and Big Tech Moves To Control Free Speech [Video]

Parler
Parler CEO

Sundance – The CEO of Parler, John Matze, appears on Fox News to discuss the targeting of the social media platform and the removal of their website from Amazon servers.

Obviously the issue of targeted deplatforming is one close to the current community of CTH 2.0 users and administrators after we suffered a similar targeting from WordPress/Automattic.  However, there is something about the Parler construct that is puzzling. Continue reading

How China’s Mobile Ecosystems Are Making Banks Obsolete

Giant Chinese tech companies have bypassed credit cards and banks to create their own low-cost digital payment systems.

paymentsEllen Brown – The US credit card system siphons off excessive amounts of money from merchants, who must raise their prices to cover this charge. In a typical $100 credit card purchase, only $97.25 goes to the seller. The rest goes to banks and processors. But who can compete with Visa and MasterCard?

It seems China’s new mobile payment ecosystems can. According to a May 2018 article in Bloomberg titled “Why China’s Payment Apps Give U.S. Bankers Nightmares”:

The future of consumer payments may not be designed in New York or London but in China. There, money flows mainly through a pair of digital ecosystems that blend social media, commerce and banking—all run by two of the world’s most valuable companies. That contrasts with the U.S., where numerous firms feast on fees from handling and processing payments. Western bankers and credit-card executives who travel to China keep returning with the same anxiety: Payments can happen cheaply and easily without them.

The nightmare for the US financial industry is that a major technology company – whether one from China or a US giant such as Amazon or Facebook – might replicate the success of the Chinese mobile payment systems, cutting banks out. Continue reading