How Censorship Does and Does Not Work
Commentary
We are watching the unfolding of despotism in real time. It is giving all of us a lesson in how it works. They locked us in our homes, closed our businesses, told us we cannot go to church or to restaurants, restricted our travel, but then a problem began. Many people started objecting and they asked questions. If there is a pandemic, why is there no focus on basic therapies? Why is the sole emphasis on an untested vaccine? How in the world are all these measures going to fix the problem?
There were too many anomalies to keep this up despite the attempt to make the panic last as long as possible, certainly through the 2020 but then longer and longer. Finally, everything seemed to be falling apart for the mainstream narrative even though the media kept broadcasting it daily.
That’s when the despots turned to the one weapon they had left. They tried to shut everyone up.
At some point in this trajectory, it became obvious to close watchers that the public mind was faced with aggressive attempts at curation. All the main channels became closed to debate. Post the wrong thoughts on Facebook or Twitter and you find yourself throttled or canceled. Post a video on YouTube and it is taken down. Write an article and Google somehow cannot find it for anyone to read.
This has been going on for three years now but really longer dating back to 2001 with the misnamed Patriot Act. It authorized an unprecedented amount of surveillance of the American people that mutated into aggressive censorship.
When I talk about this with friends, they immediately point out that there are plenty of channels and venues in which people can speak. It is not censorship if there are ways to express yourself. But this is a crude understanding of how things work. If government controls 95 percent or more of the main ways that people get information, and if when you say the wrong thing every technology is deployed to make your thoughts disappear, that is censorship.
I’m often amazed at how naïve people are about information and its means of reach on the internet. Early on in lockdowns, when Facebook did not quite have its act together, I posted a piece about a past pandemic in which there were no lockdowns. Facebook mistakenly boosted it because a fact checker said it was true. I’ve never seen traffic like that. It was many millions in a matter of days. Once Facebook figured out the error, the traffic fell and fell until the article disappeared again.
That was the moment I realized the game. If you say the right thing, you are awarded with influence. If you say the wrong thing, you are buried. This is how it works. The censors are not that bugged about your speech if no one hears it anyway. It’s the tree that falls in the forest that no one was around to hear. The game of curating the public mind involves amplification and minimization. It’s technological wizardry that makes it all possible.
What’s remarkable about all the censorship efforts of the last three years have come at the expense of normal management of media venues that would be expected of any responsible company.
Last week, for example, the Wall Street Journal featured an extremely well-documented story that revealed that Instagram had been hosting a vast trove of child pornography on its site and even boosting posts to target audiences.
Quoting:
“Pedophiles have long used the internet, but unlike the forums and file-transfer services that cater to people who have interest in illicit content, Instagram doesn’t merely host these activities. Its algorithms promote them. Instagram connects pedophiles and guides them to content sellers via recommendation systems that excel at linking those who share niche interests, the Journal and the academic researchers found.”
“Though out of sight for most on the platform, the sexualized accounts on Instagram are brazen about their interest. The researchers found that Instagram enabled people to search explicit hashtags such as #pedowhore and #preteensex and connected them to accounts that used the terms to advertise child-sex material for sale. Such accounts often claim to be run by the children themselves and use overtly sexual handles incorporating words such as ‘little slut for you.’”
The story goes on in astonishing detail. One might suppose that the story would absolutely rock the entire world of media. After all, such content is not only a violation of the terms of use. It is contrary to all federal law.
Incredibly, the story did not get much attention at all. There was near silence apart from The Epoch Times. A week later, the story has disappeared. We get nothing other than a quiet “oops” from this company and that’s about it.
Keep in mind that Instagram is owned by Meta which also owns Facebook, which is run by Mark Zuckerberg. This is the guy who volunteered to turn over the world’s most powerful social media organ to Anthony Fauci to administer during the biggest crisis of our lives. Even as posts questioning lockdowns, masks, and vaccines were blocked and deleted, the same platform was providing free space and boosting technologies to the most ghastly dregs on the planet earth.
This confluence of these two realities should be a scandal for the ages. Instead, what we get is silence. In other words, the censorship itself is being censored. And this is how it is supposed to work.
There’s another factor too. The censorship seems arbitrary sometimes because it is supposed to. Sometimes your post is deleted for no apparent reason and then another gets though that one might suppose would trigger the censors. It’s hard to make sense of it and hard to comply. This is intentional. Every authoritarian government behaves this way. It is designed to make us fear and comply through self-censorship. We spend so much time trying to figure out the game that we truly forget what it means to exercise genuine freedom.
For the first time in my life, we all seem to live in two realities. One is that which we hear in public life. The other is that which we know from talking to friends, family, and neighbors. The best example today concerns the necessity, safety, and effectiveness of the COVID vaccines. In private, it seems like everyone has a story that contradicts the media line.
We talk about injury, adverse effects, and even death. And yet you hear almost nothing about this in public life, simply because the media outlets are owned by the manufacturers and government heavily backed the whole program. Even now, this topic is the third rail that anyone successful cannot touch for fear of professional destruction.
It takes a person of bravery and dedication to high principles to break these rules in such times. We are all in their debt. Without the freedom to speak without fear, the rest of our freedoms are in grave jeopardy. Some people today even deny that there is any problem to solve even though the constraints on our ability to speak keep intensifying by the day.
Long run, I’m an optimist on this topic. There are enough smaller venues that are willing to speak and take the risks. I can daily sense that the official narrative on all these topics is starting to crack, and the people who insist on the truth of the lies seem to be weakening. It’s a long hard struggle but it is one that we have to win.
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