Even with a major war ongoing, the continued disappearance of MSNBC and CNN's audience is extreme and rapid. The number of viewers under 55 watching MSBNC's prime-time shows is barely 100k or less. These are mid-level YouTube numbers.
The one time CNN has historically thrived is wartime. Yet they're back to their paltry, humiliating pre-war numbers: barely a half-million *total viewers* in prime-time. These are dying networks. Nobody has interest. Their solution - let's make people pay to watch! - is just sad.
That doesn't mean these networks have zero influence. They are part of huge corporate conglomerates that can blast the content with major online and offline megaphones. Political/media elites still watch. But the public appetite for these 2 partisan DNC liberal networks is gone.
🤣🤣🤣🤣
As I was just saying . . . . which corporate geniuses decided the way to save CNN from the fact that nobody wants to watch their hosts for free is to make people pay to watch those same hosts spout the same trite, partisan, superficial bullshit?
Like everyone, I have no idea what Elon Musk's intentions are with Twitter.
But what I know for sure - having seen it first-hand with Substack, Rumble, Callin - is that few things are more urgent than platforms devoted to free speech and discourse, rejecting messaging control.
The primary problem is not that tech monopolies have become hives of censorship and speech controls. It's more pernicious and aggressive. They are now key weapons in maintaining closed propaganda systems, always aligned with the US security state:
If Musk restored what was heralded as the potential of not only of Twitter but the internet generally - liberating people from centralized state and corporate control and fostering free discourse - it'd be one of the most valuable developments in years. I realize it's a big "if."
NETFLIX: AZOV ASCENDS: How a plucky, feisty neo-Nazi militia transformed from scourge of the Western states and media to beloved heroes and avatars of freedom-fighters, complete with their own celebrities, social media fan base, and shiny new weapons arsenal provided by NATO.
DSA is now officially working to send weapons and other military equipment to Ukraine. Can't wait to see the Azov guys carrying rifles with the DSA logo on it.
If you watch the YouTube videos of the named "person of interest" in the Brooklyn subway shooting, you will be astonished at the huge gap between his actual dominant ideology and political worldview and how liberal corporate media outlets are describing it. Or maybe you won't be.
In any event, it's an extremely safe bet that if this "person of interest" is in fact the lone attacker in Brooklyn, this story will disappear from the public discourse before you can bat an eye.
The Intercept published an article mocking FBI for believing this ideology exists and can lead to violence (headline: "The Strange Tale of the FBI’s Fictional 'Black Identity Extremism; Movement"). That's what happens when you "report" what's pleasing.
Preventing populations from asking who benefits from a protracted proxy war in Ukraine, and who pays the price, is paramount.
A closed propaganda system is vital to achieve that. That's what explains the unprecedented spate of state/corporate censorship in the West.
Note: the censorship goes in one direction. Just as "disinformation" was fully permitted as long as it was devoted to propping up Dems and undermining Trump, lies and disinformation are permitted if it serves the NATO cause in Ukraine. Only"pro-Russian"voices are censored.
Great reporting by @julie_kelly2, @DarrenJBeattie and BuzzFeed's @kenbensinger and @jvgarrison. It's long been clear that -- like so many "domestic terror plots" -- this was an FBI terror plot from start to finish:
One of the most vocal opponents of bitcoin and the crypto tech underlying it is @HillaryClinton because, she warns, it can subvert the ruling class order, US imperialism and the dollar's hegemony.
So, of course, what passes for the "US left" is, as usual, united with Hillary.
There are valid questions/concerns about bitcoin - including current wealth distribution and environmental impact - but it's one of the only viable solutions to threats to privacy, centralized speech controls and US imperialism enabled by infinite debt:
Contrary to the lies spread by the usual liberal smear artists - including the DNC "left" that always ends up with Pelosi - I wasn't paid to speak at the Bitcoin conference. My interest is political, not financial, for reason @TBSocialist explains here: