Thread by @caitoz

Yet Another Major Escalation In Establishment Internet Censorship

"YouTube, whose corporate owner Google is arguably the most powerful company on earth, is now deleting user videos which claim the US election was fraudulent."
caitlinjohnstone.substack.com/p/yet-another-…

YouTube's official statement on its decision to do this is very revealing, not so much for what it says as for what it does not say.

https://twitter.com/YouTubeInsider/status/1336672916088516614?s=20

At no point does the video publishing platform attempt to argue that it is removing these videos because they jeopardize anyone's health or safety, as it did when it began deleting videos deemed to be spreading misinformation about Covid-19.

At no point does it attempt to argue that these videos are inciting violence, as it did when it began deleting QAnon videos.

At no point does it claim that these videos are misleading voters, as it initially began collaborating with the US government to prevent, since all the voting is over and done with.

It's simply deleting the videos because they are believed to be wrong.
archive.is/WFLKd

Even if America did not have the single most flawed election system in the entire western world (and it does), and even if it had been conclusively proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that no election fraud of any sort took place (and it hasn't),
salon.com/2016/04/15/ame…

...it would still be a massive escalation beyond previous online censorship protocols to begin censoring people simply because they are wrong. People are allowed to be wrong.

A free society allows people the right to voice wrong beliefs because the only alternative is creating a monolithic Ministry of Truth which has authority over what the right and wrong beliefs are.

Matt Taibbi has written a solid article condemning YouTube's latest ramp-up and highlighting the double standard in the way Republicans are being banned from making essentially the same claims Dems have been making for years without any repercussions:

https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1337504232954417154

I would add that the primary source of this double standard is not ideological bias (though that's surely a factor as well) but the coziness these Silicon Valley tech giants have formed with US government agencies who signed off on Russiagate but not on Trump's claims.

It's not so much a liberal bias as it is a US intelligence cartel bias.

Those who understood that whoever controls the narrative controls the world and that plutocrat-controlled mass media is the linchpin of the oligarchic status quo were very excited about the arrival of the internet, because they understood its information-democratizing potential.

"On average 88% of the videos in top 10 search results related to elections came from authoritative news sources (amongst the rest are things like newsy late-night shows, creator videos and commentary)," YT boasts in the aforementioned statement on its deletion of wrongthink.

If information which isn't approved by the powerful continues to be squeezed into smaller and smaller fringe circles, the information-democratizing potential which once gave revolutionary thinkers so much hope will be completely nullified,