Thread by @caitoz

The US Government Threatens Tech Companies To Push Censorship Agendas

"So while antitrust laws ostensibly exist to protect the citizenry from corporate power, here they are being leveraged to ensure the union of corporate power and state power."
caitlinjohnstone.substack.com/p/the-us-gover…

The elephant in the room with the US government demanding increasing amounts of censorship from online platforms is that the platforms understand the government can easily bring painful regulation or devastating antitrust cases against them and break them up if they don't obey.

After Press Secretary Jen Psaki admitted on Thursday that the administration has given Facebook a list of accounts to ban for spreading "misinformation" about the Covid vaccine, she has now doubled down:

https://twitter.com/JordanUhl/status/1416101387881046020

When confronted about the extremely serious implications of a US presidential administration telling social media platforms who to censor, Psaki said the administration wasn't censoring people but merely raising the issue with the tech companies.
whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/…

Psaki is not technically lying, but she isn't telling the truth either. While it's true that the Biden administration is not directly blocking or taking down social media posts, it is also making social media companies a Godfather-style offer they can't refuse.

For years the US government has been making it abundantly clear to the giants of Silicon Valley that if they do not greatly escalate censorship of undesirable content per Washington's instructions, there will be consequences.

We saw this in 2017 when representatives from top internet platforms were brought before congress and told they needed to adopt a “mission statement” expressing their commitment “to prevent the fomenting of discord,” and we continue to see it through 2021.

https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/1416018339227394048

The reasons change, but the agenda remains the same. Sometimes it's foreign election meddling, sometimes it's the Capitol riot, sometimes it's domestic extremism and white supremacy, sometimes it's misinformation about a virus and vaccines.

These threats have been explicitly made, but really they did not need to be. Everyone involved in this dance is acutely aware that the US government has the ability to make things much harder and far less lucrative for these Silicon Valley tech companies.

The stage is already set for massive antitrust measures, with the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Antitrust finding last year that Facebook and Google are guilty of monopolistic practices, and some less severe antitrust cases are already underway.
arstechnica.com/tech-policy/20…

So now we've got worldwide online speech being herded onto a few monopolistic platforms, and the government forcing those platforms with increasing brazenness to censor that speech in alignment with its dictates under threat of total destruction.

The effect being, of course, US government control of a vast swathe of public speech, not just within the US but around the world. Which means an ungodly amount of narrative control, the ultimate prize for anyone who understands real power.
caitlinjohnstone.substack.com/p/society-is-m…

The primary factor in determining what will happen in our world is not control of capital, nor control of government, nor control of resources, nor control of weapons, but control of narrative. All the others follow from narrative control.

So while antitrust laws ostensibly exist to protect the citizenry from corporate power, here they are being leveraged to ensure the union of corporate power and state power. The carrot is billions of dollars, and the stick is the threat of painful government intervention.

This is just one of the many, many types of glue that keeps power structures aligned with one another's interests within the US-centralized empire. If you want to be a billionaire, you have to collaborate with existing power structures. Otherwise you won't be allowed in.

It's always easier to move with power than against it. That's why ambitious journalists promote the imperial narrative, it's why new money plutocrats always wind up aligning with establishment interests, and it's why so many other nations align with the US.

In theory, markets and government checks and balances are supposed to keep the big players competing against each other to our benefit. In practice, the big players always wind up collaborating against us for their own benefit.

The US Government Threatens Tech Companies To Push Censorship Agendas (Audio)

soundcloud.com/going_rogue/th…