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Caitlin Johnstone ⏳ Profile picture
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30 Nov, 9 tweets, 4 min read
Dorsey's Twitter Resignation Sparks Fears Of More Internet Censorship

Twitter's new CEO has given some indications that he has a lot less interest in free speech than his predecessor and is much more favorable to censorship via algorithm manipulation.
caitlinjohnstone.substack.com/p/dorseys-twit…
Dorsey's Twitter Resignation Sparks Fears Of More Internet Censorship (Audio)

soundcloud.com/going_rogue/do…
This resignation has led those who've been paying attention to the rise of Silicon Valley internet censorship to voice concerns that the platform's relatively lenient attitude toward speech compared to other major social media may be drawing to a close.
Dorsey's resignation comes the year after it was reported that his removal was being pursued by virulent neoconservative billionaire Paul Singer, whose Elliott Management Corp had just purchased a significant share of the company.
reuters.com/article/us-twi…
Twitter has of course been far from perfect when it comes to refraining from interfering with free expression on its platform:
Still, Twitter has been a free speech paradise compared to other major platforms like Facebook or YouTube, largely because it doesn't tend to participate in the large-scale algorithmic suppression of unauthorized perspectives and the artificial uplifting of authorized ones.
We're seeing indications that that may be one change we can expect. Compare this "recommending content" remarks from the new CEO Parag Agrawal with YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki's comments at a @wef summit earlier this year when she admitted to using algorithms to suppress content: ImageImage
@wef This is a kind of censorship that Twitter has been relatively free from, and it is by far the worst kind. Image
@wef It should be obvious to everyone that humanity is headed down a dark path if worldwide public speech is regulated by monopolistic oligarchs with a vested interest in preserving the status quo and a steadily increasing alignment with government institutions.

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More from @caitoz

Caitlin Johnstone ⏳ Profile picture
2 Dec
The first cold war was colored by a healthy fear of nuclear annihilation, support for detente in mainstream political factions, and an understanding that this was a situation we should ideally get ourselves out of as soon as possible. This new cold war features NONE of these.
And this new cold war is against TWO nuclear powers, not just one. Twice as many unpredictable moving parts. Twice as many things that can go cataclysmically wrong. And this one's got a whole new dimension of danger in the race to put weapons in space. Our odds aren't good.
I probably won't feel such an urgent need to keep talking about this once I start seeing some real sustained acknowledgement in mainstream circles that there is a very very dangerous game being played here and heroic efforts need to be made to de-escalate it.
Read 4 tweets
Caitlin Johnstone ⏳ Profile picture
1 Dec
Covid is interesting in that it has a propaganda campaign that everyone's aware of and encouraged to participate in. So you'll see things like Dore getting slammed for talking about his adverse vaccine reaction, not because it was false, but because it hurt the propaganda effort.
There's no basis whatsoever for the belief that Jimmy lied about having adverse reactions, but he got raked over the coals anyway. You see things like that all the time: people forcefully discouraged from talking about raw facts because it might hurt the vax campaign or whatever.
You are free to believe this propaganda campaign is a good thing, or that it's a necessary evil, but you can't deny that it's a propaganda campaign. There's a concerted effort to manage perception, and the rank-and-file public is actively participating in that effort.
Read 8 tweets
Caitlin Johnstone ⏳ Profile picture
28 Nov
Twitter deleted someone's reply to me saying "Taiwan needs a nuke". It was probably deleted under the mistaken impression that they were saying Taiwan should be nuked, an interesting double standard considering how many tweets you see saying "Nuke Iran", "Nuke North Korea" etc.
I mean it's possible Twitter could have deleted it for the right reason: that the commenter was calling for nuclear weapons to be given to Taiwan, because that is what they were saying. But that would mean a lot of empire think pieces also need deleting.
hoover.org/research/put-n…
Twitter users call for Iran and North Korea to be nuked all the time, and always have. I've never once heard of a tweet being deleted for this reason. But saying nuke Taiwan is off limits.
Read 4 tweets
Caitlin Johnstone ⏳ Profile picture
26 Nov
Western media are churning out reports about Russia preparing to invade Ukraine any minute now and China preparing to invade Taiwan any minute now, saying the response to each is obviously to move a lot of high-powered weaponry there, and NONE of them are questioning ANY of this.
This is so dangerous. This whole two-front nuclear brinkmanship game is so very, very dangerous, and they keep finding ways to make it MORE dangerous. And hardly anyone notices it, because the outlets people look to to understand the world aren't telling them it's dangerous.
The only danger you're allowed to discuss in mainstream western reporting about Russia and China is their scary aggressive expansionism, like this new bullshit propaganda piece here. Nowhere are you allowed to question if it's true, or to mention detente.
newsweek.com/if-china-invad…
Read 10 tweets
Caitlin Johnstone ⏳ Profile picture
25 Nov
You can tell people who freak out about Russia and China are either acting in bad faith or regurgitating propaganda because they all act like detente is not a thing. They always take it as a given that those nations will be aggressive and expansionist unless aggressively opposed.
At no time does it ever even enter their minds that hey, maybe these nations might be acting defensively here and the way to cool things off would be to move toward an easing of tensions. Image
Pilger has been writing about this for years. This article is from 2016. Yet it's still taken as a given by Serious News Reporters in the west that Russia and China are these reckless aggressors and the US is responding defensively to their aggressions.
johnpilger.com/articles/a-wor… ImageImage
Read 4 tweets
Caitlin Johnstone ⏳ Profile picture
25 Nov
Efforts To Groom Us For War With China Are Getting More Forceful

If you thought western media have been pushy with their anti-China propaganda, wait til you see The Hill's new opinion piece titled "America must prepare for war with China over Taiwan".
caitlinjohnstone.substack.com/p/efforts-to-g…
At the very bottom of the article you get to the part that really matters: the information about the author. Image
Would you like to know what this big brave warrior looks like? Would you like to see a picture of this mighty hero who has no fear of leading us all into a third world war?

Here he is: Image
Read 11 tweets

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