Thread by @caitoz

One aspect of this latest surge of online censorship we don't talk about enough is the fact that this is the first time Silicon Valley has begun openly using censorship solely to suppress dissent. They're not saying it's to save lives, it's JUST to prevent wrongthink about a war.

Think about it. With Alex Jones, QAnon, Covid skeptics etc they could claim they were censoring for the public good, to save lives and protect people from violence or a virus. Now it's just, "Well we can't have people saying wrong things about a war." They're not even pretending.

Does a Ukrainian drop dead every time someone says they don't believe Russia committed war crimes in Bucha? Does Putin get magic murder powers if enough social media users say they support his war? Do liberal faces melt off their skulls if they accidentally see an RT article? No.

There's no conceivable argument that this latest escalation in censorship being done to save lives or serve the public interest. It's solely to help fight a propaganda war against Russia, and to expand the radius of internet censorship protocols for its own sake.

Look at this @FT article whose authors led to the removal of @InfraHaz and @jacksonhinklle from Twitch. There's no claim that they're saying anything dangerous, only that they're "pushing pro-Kremlin falsehoods", i.e. disagreeing with their government.
archive.ph/n9rwH

@FT @InfraHaz @jacksonhinklle Of course for a mainstream liberal this is a distinction without a difference, because mainstream liberals already believe it's legitimate to censor people for wrongthink or disagreeing with their government. But for the rest of us it's a MAJOR escalation.

https://twitter.com/MaxBoot/status/1514570168730636290

@FT @InfraHaz @jacksonhinklle There's no legitimate reason for the Silicon Valley proxies of the most powerful government on earth to be censoring people for disagreeing with that government about a war. But that's exactly what's happening, and it's happening more and more.

https://twitter.com/caitoz/status/1514948911479549957

@FT @InfraHaz @jacksonhinklle No even the Hunter Biden laptop censorship was done under the banner of protecting an election from foreign interference. The argument was complete bullshit, just like all the others, but at least they were pretending to be protecting the public interest.

https://twitter.com/EricMil08639738/status/1515066953144184836

@FT @InfraHaz @jacksonhinklle This time is different. With censorship about the Ukraine war they're not claiming it's to protect an election, they're not claiming it's to save lives; they're not claiming it's in the public interest at all. It's JUST to facilitate a US government infowar against Moscow.

@FT @InfraHaz @jacksonhinklle It should alarm us all that it's becoming increasingly acceptable to silence people not because they're circulating dangerous disinfo, nor even because they're saying things that are necessarily false, but solely because they are saying things which undermine the US infowar.

@FT @InfraHaz @jacksonhinklle People should absolutely be allowed to say things which disagree with the most powerful empire in history about a war. They should even be allowed to say brazenly false things about that war, because otherwise only the powerful will be allowed to do so.

https://twitter.com/caitoz/status/1512060793717932036

@FT @InfraHaz @jacksonhinklle Free speech is important not because it's nice to be able to say what you want, but because the free flow of ideas and information creates a check on the powerful. It gives people the ability to hold the powerful to account. Which is exactly why the powerful work to eliminate it.

@FT @InfraHaz @jacksonhinklle We should see it as a huge, huge problem that so much of the world has been herded onto these giant monopolistic speech platforms that conduct censorship in complete alignment with the mightiest power structure in the world. This is the exact opposite of putting a check on power.

@FT @InfraHaz @jacksonhinklle Again I disagree. Claiming they were stopping hate groups on the platform was their easiest case to make, because they could claim they were protecting vulnerable groups from hate crimes and harassment. Censoring wrongthink about a war is miles from this.

https://twitter.com/MrDawson89/status/1515070831545753601

@FT @InfraHaz @jacksonhinklle There is no argument to be made that "pro-Kremlin falsehoods" lead to the harm of a single Ukrainian, or anyone else, in any conceivable way, even if we accept that what's being said is 100% false and 100% "pro-Kremlin". There is now no argument that it's in the public interest.

@FT @InfraHaz @jacksonhinklle The closest you'd get to arguing that it's in the public interest is "Well the US is in a propaganda war with Russia, and it's in the public interest that the US win that propaganda war." But that means we no longer as a society care about truth or facts, only serving propaganda.

@FT @InfraHaz @jacksonhinklle There should at least be some very serious public discussion before making such an immensely consequential leap, from claiming to be a truth-based society to collectively agreeing that we now only care about mass-scale psychological manipulation to beat Putin. But there wasn't.

@FT @InfraHaz @jacksonhinklle How much are we as a society willing to give up for the US government and its allies to win a propaganda war against Putin? This is a conversation which should already have been going on in mainstream circles for some time now, but it never even started. Let's start it.

@FT @InfraHaz @jacksonhinklle

https://twitter.com/caitoz/status/1515315228460089347?s=20&t=LjMCmsXkkKdEgs19plM3ww