Yesterday was a flagship day in corporate media. It was the day they were forced to explicitly state what has long been clear: they not only favor censorship but desperately crave and depend on it.
Even if Musk doesn't buy Twitter, never forget what yesterday revealed.
In US culture, we're inculcated from childhood that censorship is bad. So of course nobody -- especially journalists -- wants to say: "I favor censorship."
That's why they need euphemisms like "content moderation": to pretend it's about bots, abuse, etc. rather than ideology.
Everyone knows they are lying. Nobody cares about Twitter censoring bots or spam. That's not what this is about.
The social media censorship people care about is 100% ideological: banning dissent on COVID, the Biden emails, culture war debates, etc. That's what's at stake.
Let's put it this way:
On Google/YouTube, Facebook and Twitter, you are free to say the 2000 and 2016 elections were stolen and fraudulent. You can't say that about 2020.
Before the 2020 election, you weren't allowed to post reporting on the Biden emails.
It's all ideological.
Throughout the COVID pandemic, you weren't allowed to question the efficacy of cloth masks. You weren't allowed to interrogate the origins of the virus. You weren't allowed to debate vaccines or lockdowns. No dissent from Fauci/WHO was allowed.
The censorship is 100% political.
You're allowed to spread any lies, propaganda and disinformation you want if it advances the Ukrainian cause (i.e., the US/NATO cause), but will be instantly banned if you say anything that challenges that on the ground of "Russia disinformation." This is all explicit.
Censorship of conservatives gets most attention because it's so common, but censorship of anti-establishment leftists is also frequent: any dissident can be banned.
Pretending this is about bots or spam is fraudulent. This censorship is about control of political information.
Social media was heralded as an innovation that would liberate individuals from centralized control by the state and oligarchical power over their speech.
It has become the exact opposite: the most powerful tool of information control and speech constraints ever devised.
How dumb do you have to be to believe that journalists - who work at Bloomberg and the Bezos-owned WPost or Comcast or CNN - are worried about billionaires controlling media (🤣).
They're only petrified that the *wrong* billionaire, one who may not censor for them, might reign.
There are many reasons to be skeptical of Musk's motives and, even if pure, his ability to restore free speech to Twitter. Way too many powerful interests need this censorship. But the panic reveals so much. My @getcallin show yesterday covered all this:
Last night @elonmusk vowed to honor the endless, repressive and due-process-free censorship orders from Brazil's Judge Alexandre de Moraes.
The Judge has banned various journalists and members of Congress, among others, from social media.
This would be a huge deal for Brazil:
Rumble last year also announced that it would refuse to comply. The platform was expending huge resources to constantly take down videos and ban users upon the endless, lawless orders of a single job.
Amazingly, Rumble is no longer available to anyone in Brazil, getting this:
In January of last year, we obtained one of the secret orders Judge Moraes issues to platforms. This one banned Senators, Congress members and journalists, and mandated secrecy.
No due process. We reported it here. Hard to overstate how extreme it is:
UK Court hands Assange a partial victory in the Biden DOJ's attempt to extradite him.
US must provide explicit assurances that Assange 1) can raise a 1st Am defense, 2) will have the same rights as US citizens and 3) will never face the death penalty.
Biden WH doesn't want the sideshow of a trial; daily protests; discovery into CIA; Assange on the stand; Biden as the first-ever president to imprison a publisher.
They want to kill Assange through conviction-free imprisonment.
How dare the US President weigh in on a war he has caused American citizens to finance, arm and support!
Look at the mentality of these Israel fanatics: the duty of American citizens is not only to finance Israel's military and wars, but also never question what Israel does: