 Hello, I'm Maria Andritsch-Gelvida and this is Left Left Up, a monthly radical breakdown of news and gaming and tech. During the hours following the deadly mass shooting in Las Vegas, an interesting failure in Google's algorithms has nearly presented us with another disaster. With the help of Internet Forum 4chan, a registered Democrat's Geary Danly's name has been plastered all over the Internet as being the suspected shooter. Danly's ex-wife, Mary Lu, was briefly a person of interest to the police, though later they dropped any investigations into her. However, the fact that a person close to her was a self-proclaimed liberal was all that the 4chan trolls needed to play their incredibly effective game of allowing the story to spread. And every PDF page was created that hosted numerous pictures of the individual, as well as his personal details. With the help of the troll swarm, this post had 80,000 views the next morning and was quickly picked up as a top story by Google's algorithms. On Facebook, a search for articles about Geary Danly prompted seven links leading to inaccurate stories about him. Now while thankfully no one came after Mr. Danly physically, in the past, others have not been so lucky. After the Boston shooting, teenager Sunil Tripathi was wrongly accused of being the perpetrator and he sadly took his own life. Last year, a pizza place in Washington DC was subject to a shootout after a fake news story was spread connecting the fast food chain that sex trafficking ring allegedly organized by the Democrat Party. It's ironic, for all the Silicon Valley brainpower they cannot avoid such incredibly damaging fake stories from going viral. But also, for all the free speech safeguarding that 4chan supposedly stands for, they are most certainly playing with fire here. When an even larger tragedy will occur due to these fake stories, I see the state quickly moving in and imposing big limitations on these Internet search engines. Something as proponent of net neutrality, we don't want of course. But what could be another route to avoid such mistake? While the answer is pretty boring really, employed more people, Google, Facebook, it's beyond me that during such a high profile story as the biggest shooting in recent American history, the bosses of these websites sleep well at night, thinking that simply algorithms will take care of the correct spreading of these news. No artificial aggregate yet can dissect validity of news and recognize their human impact. And again, these companies can afford to have a round-the-clock workforce, preventing such unvalidated stories to take their route on the Internet. However, they're choosing to cut staffing costs and keep their own websites unmonitored. I say put some job adverts out, Google, Facebook or net neutrality is in real danger. By popular demand, I wish to spend a big segment of today's show on cryptocurrencies. In August, the big news in the cryptocurrency community was that Bitcoin Cash split itself from the existing Bitcoin blockchain. This was initiated due to Bitcoin community's refusal to increase the allowed amount of the currency that can be mined. Those who owned Bitcoin before the split now own an equal amount of Bitcoin Cash, meaning Bitcoin Cash and Bitcoin each now have around 17 million units in circulation. As the original Bitcoin's mining is capped at 21 million units, the point of Bitcoin Cash is to increase this share. Why is that of importance to radical politics, you ask? Again, it is simply one of those technological developments that needs to be kept on the very close eye by the left. Cryptocurrencies are now being mined not only on an industrial level by supercomputers in China, but North Korea is reportedly joining the mining game on a state level. As geopolitical tensions are rising, Bitcoin is living up to its growing reputation as a disaster hedge, setting a new record high of nearly $5,000 per unit thanks to North Korea launch of a missile over Japan in late last August. In fact, some argue that increasing overall political instability was exactly the aim by North Korea with this missile launch as the country saw the value of its Bitcoin by the postaries like skyrockets. There is another angle to the Bitcoin story that is worth noting. Some theorists predict that Bitcoin will become the new gold standard. At the end of the World Wars, as the end of global conflict was on the horizon, meetings were called to discuss how the retribution and settlement among nations would be carried out. British economist John Maynard Keynes proposed economic system of central banking conceived of a currency called bankor. His proposals were rejected in favor of the agreement of currencies being packed to the price of gold, and the US dollar being the reserve currency linked to the price of gold. This system has since been dissolved in favor of the floating currency system that we have today and is extremely volatile in the time of crisis. Recently, however, Keynes' plans have been receiving support once again. In 2009, Jules Sainte-Chryon, the governor of China's central banks, suggested there was a mistake not to accept Keynes' proposals. Two years later, Dominic Stiles-Khan, the managing director of the International Monetary Fund, was asked what he thought the IMF's post-2008 role ought to be, and he replied Keynes 60 years ago already foresaw what was needed, but was too early and now is the time to do it. And I think we are ready to do it. Currently Bitcoin is the closest we got to a functioning global currency dependent from any state or government. Economist George Selgin argues that such a system would be stable, inflation-resistant, and self-regulating. It is fully possible that it would be the ultimate fate of Bitcoin to be the high-powered money that serves as a reserve currency for banks that issue their own digital cash. I'm sure doubt that such transition will be anything but another extension of neoliberal order, but again, as the left, we must be prepared for such eventualities and come up with alternatives if need be. Now allow me to go slightly off-board and imagine a utopian vision that could potentially be informed by cryptocurrencies. In May 2013, a scandal broke out when users of CSGO Antichrist software that they downloaded from official eSports Entertainment Associations channels. They've noticed that there was a Bitcoin mine that was secretly planted in their graphic cards after acquiring the program. Despite only mining $20,000, the company has agreed to pay $1 million settlement in the state of New Jersey in order to avoid any criminal prosecution. Unsurprisingly, the two programmers that created the software update and accidentally released it into the system were fired and ESEA's reputation was badly tarnished and is still recovering. Recently, both Pirate Bay and Showtime have been found to also use this controversial method of revenue gathering. While these somewhat underhanded monetizing attempts may have left a lot of people unimpressed, for me they pose a potentially very interesting alternative to the standard models of funding new products and services. The core of inequality, to put it simply, is some people not being able to access the stuff that other people can. In practice, if all commodities were free and available to everyone, economic inequality should technically be eradicated. But economic heroism, portness, social equality can only be achieved by abolishing our judicial systems, all types of prejudices, institutional or not. For the purpose of this video, though, I want to stick with the plan for material goods, specifically electronic products, and a possibility of a new type of monetary transaction for them. Instead of enforcing set rental periods, it is possible to instead have them use-based? Think about it, all electronic commodities become free, but one only pays for the electricity that any particular gadget uses, all translated to a sort of credit system. In this world, one would pay no money in acquiring their smartphone, gaming console, fancy fridge, home robot, whatever it may be. Instead the cost would be decided upon the time spent them interacting with the product. So the creators of these gadgets would have the incentive for making best and longest lasting products, as they'd wonder to be the ones used by most consumers. The only thing that still holds us equal as humans is our available time to spend in this world. Money can't really buy that. There is a day and night cycle, we all need eight hours of sleep. There cannot be a dramatic contrast between how much one person engages with certain products over the next person. Surely then our economy should be based precisely on that. In this model, statistics of usage would be recorded, money owed for electricity gets calculated in proportion as to what gadgets were used, and therefore how much of it goes to the maker. And in certain devices there could be like a fraction of subcharge for the software used in them. That would go straight to the developer and so on. For any individual, this allows them to find the perfect equilibrium in their working, leisure, care time as the more they work, the less time or capital they have to spend for certain items and the other way around. To use a phrase from a 2016 film made of, perhaps the disgraced Bernie Madoff character is right when he says, nothing makes a man want something more than telling him he can't have it. The fact that everyone will be able to have everything makes me think that they would not just hoard the stuff if there is a comfortable way for them to have precisely what they need. Of course I can see a situation arising where perhaps people from more affluent parts of the world could benefit from such a system and it would be once again, built on the backs of the countries assembling the actual product that would be catastrophic but not surprising and something that should be fought against. Anyways, I have written a whole blog post about potential benefits of such a system and I'll leave the long link below the video if you wish to learn more. Another celebrity has endorsed electronic sports. Jennifer Lopez follows celebrities like Shaquille Arneal and Ashton Kutcher that have invested their millions into the burgeoning e-sports industry. Now that would be all dandy if labour laws would be catching up with the hype too. The young players are so grateful to be noticed for their talent that they rarely complain about their work conditions. And it is a workplace, anyone thinking that playing video games and earning money is already a privileged position doesn't grasp the material history of leisure turning into labour. The vast majority of people's hobbies, for example cooking, arts or physical sports have already been turned into commodity industries and the biggest cultural strand in the world, gaming, is no exception. Competitors in e-sports will no doubt testify to long and anti-social practice hours, intense health regimen and heavy responsibility. Where professional gaming is lagging, however, is establishing traditional mechanisms to protect the players workplace rights. In the case of professional e-sports association or PEA, we have seen the managers engaging in union busting when their players have attempted any type of collective bargaining. The contracts the players or commentators have are usually extremely pro-carriers with sick holiday pay or pensions being like a distant dream. Majority of the players get given a poultry salary and the management keeps the winnings from tournaments. Termination of contracts is a frightening prospect to the players that have skipped college to become professional e-sports competitors, so not many whistleblow and ones that have got unofficially blacklisted by the industry as troublemakers. Whereas football has organizations like Professional Footballers Association that will fight for better retirement conditions, support with injuries, etc., e-sports has no such support system. With the winnings of tournaments reaching 20 million dollars and viewer numbers reaching record levels every year, it's unsurprising that the rich are wishing to invest in this vastly growing entertainment industry, one could only wish that the people providing that entertainment could be treated slightly better.