Thread by @caitoz

No Real Change Can Come If Speech Is Restricted By Monopolistic Oligarchs

"People will continue to be successfully propagandized as long as a critical mass are prevented from viewing ideas & information which contradict establishment-friendly narratives."
caitlinjohnstone.substack.com/p/no-real-chan…

In a great new article titled "Facebook and Twitter Cross a Line Far More Dangerous Than What They Censor" on the cross-platform silencing of The New York Post's publication of Hunter Biden's emails, @ggreenwald writes the following:
theintercept.com/2020/10/15/fac…

Greenwald is correct. The increasingly iron-fisted internet censorship we've seen rolled out over the last four years has consistently targeted groups that are oppositional to the status quo with which monopolistic Silicon Valley megacorporations have aligned themselves.

When you're talking about "information rebellions" with vague terms like "discord" and "division", you're talking about controlling the flow of information to prevent people from using the power of their numbers to collectively take direct action.

https://twitter.com/caitoz/status/1026574667673296896

People with an ear to the ground understood the potential political ramifications of a new paradigm in which ordinary people can circulate ideas and information without the permission of the establishment political/media class.

This is a major, major problem for humanity as a species, because we will never be able to make real changes to the systemic problems which are driving us toward disaster as long as establishment power is controlling our ability to interact with each other.

If online censorship keeps tightening, the internet will cease to be an information-democratizing tool of the people to any extent at all and will instead just enable ruling power structures to administer propaganda much more quickly and efficiently than they could previously.

The establishment pushes censorship for the same reason cult leaders and abusive partners work to isolate their victims: they don't want people sharing ideas and information with each other about their abuser, because that can lead to their victims escaping from the abuse.

We will never escape from the abuse as long as we are successfully prevented from sharing ideas and information with each other about our abusers to awaken a critical mass.

The common argument that is often made sincerely by libertarians and insincerely by liberals is that internet censorship can be fought by just starting your own platform, which because of how monopolies work is fraught with major obstacles:
arstechnica.com/tech-policy/20…

Of course people are free to start more fringe alternative social media platforms that won't be censored. They're free to dig a hole in the ground and yell into it without censorship, too.

Moreover, there's nothing the establishment narrative managers would like better than for dissident voices to quarantine themselves onto obscure fringe platforms where they can't infect the mainstream herd with wrongthink.

A mass exodus of all dissident voices from all mainstream platforms wouldn't cause problems for the establishment, it would solve problems for the establishment.

Basic pressure helps too. The establishment can only advance ugly policies if people aren't shining a big bright light on what they're doing and calling lots of attention to it. Going against public outcry risks losing their ability to manufacture consent.

https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/1317067543576825856

Like the rest of our struggle, we'll either win this battle or we won't. But we've got to do everything we can to make sure humanity comes out on top, because there are very dark days ahead of us if we fail.

There are some battles which we can afford to lose because the cost outweighs the benefit and it won't affect the outcome of the war, but this is not one of those battles.