Censorship again.

Written By: - Date published: 1:46 pm, October 18th, 2018 - 13 comments
Categories: Abuse of power, censorship, colonialism, facebook, International, liberalism, Media, Politics - Tags: ,

So I think we know the story. Across various monopolistic platforms, content is getting scrubbed for no clear reason. Better than that, it seems there’s some coordination being entered into, so that at the same time facebook content disappears, the same related twitter content disappears.

The Weekly Standard has been assigned as one of five “guardians” of facebook content. That should be cause for sitting up and taking notice. But aside from Snopes, which is no use for anything beyond finding some pointless truthiness about tittle tattle, the other appointed censors also have a decidedly right wing bent that lends itself rather nicely to promoting given political and ideological agendas.

And the reasons for content and pages being blocked and taken down are opaque and nebulous, relying on such notions as “inauthentic content” and  “fomenting discord” (God forbid that politics ever fomented discord!) There’s no system of appeal. And, importantly, there’s often nowhere else to go for people and the information or news they have.

These platforms are essentially monopolies. If you are a Palestinian in Gaza who gets news and information via facebook (as a huge percentage do) and facebook wipes out Palestinian content at the behest of the Israeli government (which it does in over 90% of cases), then it becomes well nigh impossible to keep yourself informed.

Here’s a headline purportedly from the New York Times (Oct 11)  “Americans are using the Russian playbook to spread disinformation and Facebook plans to cull hundreds of pages and fake accounts”.

I’ve used the word “purportedly” because the link I gave you either contains false information, or the New York Times changed its headline to “Facebook tackles rising threat: Americans aping Russian schemes to deceive” . Whatever, the article makes interesting reading because it would appear that aside from “acting like a Greek Russian” (whatever that means) now being a reason for suspicion, “consensus” and not “discord” is the problem –

“These networks are trying to manipulate people by manufacturing consensus — that’s crossing the line over free speech,” said Ryan Fox, a co-founder of New Knowledge, a firm that tracks disinformation.

Because mainstream liberal media would never copy one another, echo one another, or present a false consensus. Weapons of Mass Destruction? Never happened. Play pass the parcel with whatever latest meme is to gain credibility? Unthinkable.

As reported by The Canary, the following five minute video presented by George Monbiot is one of the latest pieces of information killed by facebook. It was originally published by Double Down News (obviously on their facebook page with the aim of generating views and traffic – y’know, using facebook for what facebook is for). Anyway. Here it is. Just “because”.

 

 

13 comments on “Censorship again. ”

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  1. Siobhan 1
    18 October 2018 at 2:31 pm

    Hilariously…I just used the Google search to see if The Guardian are covering this story. And, nope, at least not as yet.

    they did have a fairly mild piece yesterday along the lines of ….

    “Thursday, Facebook announced it had removed more than 800 political pages and accounts for “coordinated inauthentic behavior” and spamming.

    This week, the people behind the pages Facebook purged for being inauthentic are angry. They feel they have been unfairly targeted for practices they say are common across the entire social network.”

    But no outrage and a good amount of distancing themselves from the ‘radicals’, people from The Left and the Right apparently, who have been silenced. Even when its their own guy. A centrist really.

    • corodale 1.1
      18 October 2018 at 4:07 pm

      yeah g, but could always be censorship at the oogle level too. Political science research requires alternative search engines. A significant increase in oogle filter in the last few months.

    • Bill 2.1
      18 October 2018 at 3:32 pm

      As a first time commenter, your comment was held in moderation (I threw away the other three). That happens to every “first timer”. As long as you stick the handle Kereru, future comments will appear straight way.

      Meanwhile.

      If we want the harvesting of data by companies and entities using facebook to end, then all we need do is treat facebook as a public utility and subject it to legislation designed to protect our access. Personal information, no longer marketable, could then be subject to existing safeguards.

      Of course, that’s not going to happen. And they (alongside youtube, google and twitter) won’t be broken up as long as they “play” the censorship game that governments are demanding of them – governments that are gradually losing the ability to control various narratives by disseminating information through “traditional” outlets, that in turn are losing readers (market share) to “non-traditional” sources.

      Censorship, under the dubious auspices signposted in the post, are their way of maintaining influence (for government) and dominance (for mainstream media).

  3. Aaron 3
    18 October 2018 at 3:30 pm

    So basically the rich and powerful have always wanted to control the information we get and with these new platforms they seem to have found new ways to match the new platforms.

    I’m not trying to be ho-hum about this, just recognising what is going on. The internet must have been terrifying for some of the powers-that-be – just as radio, the printing press and a properly translated bible were in previous centuries.

    It’s not a big surprise – but we do need to work out how to combat it. I’m going to try linking that video on my facebook to see how long it lasts – just for my own amusement value 🙂

    • corodale 3.1
      18 October 2018 at 4:21 pm

      “Archontic control” is a term which seems to extend what you are saying to the spiritual level.

      Bridging the airy spiritual back to earth with science, this British scientist Rupert covers some of the theory behind the counter consciousness, to naturally overcome the control mechanisms – “morphic resonance” is a useful term he develops on.

      https://www.sheldrake.org/research/morphic-resonance

  4. WILD KATIPO 4
    18 October 2018 at 4:26 pm

    So does this spill on into things like youtube ?… because when I went to find some info much of what didn’t seem hard to find before now seems to have vanished. And is this the start of sweeping pressures by govts to blatantly censor the net and succeeding ? Some of you techo’s could put this in plainspeak perhaps, – and if it is, its quite scary tbh.

    Whats going on ?

    • adam 4.1
      18 October 2018 at 5:04 pm

      Yes, they changed all the algorithms to control searchers- happened about a year ago. They also deleted heaps of stuff.

      Just in case you missed it Silicon valley is full of ex-military people who are doing this work for these corporations.

      Oh and it’s all private business so you have no say. Welcome to the new corporate world, were politics is a side show and that boot you feel on your neck is real.

      • WILD KATIPO 4.1.1
        18 October 2018 at 7:33 pm

        Cheers. Ex military people you say,…that figures. I recall some time back that ructions were going on about it , but it seems it has become much more sophisticated and invasive. Some material should be taken down for sure, but it seems like its been a blanket, shot gun approach.

  6. esoteric pineapples 6
    18 October 2018 at 5:01 pm

    “Facebook is partnering with the Atlantic Council in another effort to combat election-related propaganda and misinformation from proliferating on its service. The social networking giant said Thursday that a partnership with the Washington D.C.-based think tank would help it better spot disinformation during upcoming world elections.”

    http://fortune.com/2018/05/17/facebook-atlantic-council-election-propaghanda/

    Atlantic Council includes Henry Kissinger on its Board of Directors

    http://www.atlanticcouncil.org/about/board-of-directors

  7. McMuppet 7
    18 October 2018 at 5:54 pm

    I remember having some pretty heated arguments on Twitter (before I dumped it in favour of Gab leaving close to 500 followers behind) about how silencing voices on the right amounted to censorship and failure to respect freedom of speech. They thought it was mostly fine but now as we are seeing this can be applied to anyone.

  8. Bob 8
    19 October 2018 at 3:34 pm

    According to Stuff, Jacinda Ardern agrees with inauthentic content being systematically scrubbed:
    https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/opinion/107801609/Jacinda-Ardern-believes-inauthentic-content-should-be-scrubbed
    I agree, I hate all of these fake news posts being spread around…

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