This week
three media goliaths — Facebook, Google, and Twitter, who collectively act as
information gatekeepers for the Internet — announced they would begin implementing
censorship practices against news sites they deem misleading.
Web sites that publish “fake,” misleading, or even satirical
news will now be subject to a sliding scale of infractions that will target ad
revenue and social media algorithms. Without ad revenue from monetization
platforms like Google Adsense, many of these sites would not be able to
continue publishing, and without Facebook’s distribution platform, even sites
with good organic reach could find their traffic severely crippled.
“Moving
forward, we will restrict ad serving on pages that misrepresent, misstate, or
conceal information about the publisher, the publisher’s content, or the
primary purpose of the web property,” Google stated, following the lead of Mark Zuckerberg.
On a proprietary note, do these companies have the right to
restrict users of their services who they deem to be in breach of contract?
Yes. Is it understandable to want to exert some control over hacks who
manipulate search engine and social media algorithms at the expense of a
misinformed public? Yes. Does this exonerate the intellectual and cultural
crime of using the specter of online ‘yellow journalism’ to deliver a crippling
blow to the revenue streams of independent media…?
The move
comes after Facebook and Google found themselves taking a lot of heat after the
election. (Liberal) detractors went so far as to blame Facebook and Google for Trump’s win,
claiming the constant online echo chamber of sensationalist news,
unsubstantiated claims, and apocryphal headlines paved the way for Clinton’s
electoral collapse.
The new restrictions will target a wide variety of web sites:
sites whose editorial content is deemed (by, Google, Facebook and Twitter’s
board of directors, presumably?) false or misleading; sites that intend to
invoke outrage with clickbait-y titles; and even sites that are purposely fake
(such as the Onion’s sister site, Clickhole) for satirical purposes.
The websites on the new blacklist include Zero Hedge, The Free
Thought Project, Collective Evolution, Disclose.TV, and dozens of others. The
selections run the gamut from partisan propagandistic sites to alternative
philosophy and healing resources. Unsurprisingly, alt-right darlings Infowars
and Breitbart, both of which will soon wield vast power in the Trump
administration, are targeted. In the case of Infowars, one might surmise the
conservative Trumpland publication’s insistence that Hillary Clinton’s
inner-circle practices satanic rituals had something to do with their inclusion
on the list.
Some of
the other sites on the list are
surprising. Collective Evolution, as an
example, may be considered by some to have New Age influences, but many of
their articles practice sound journalistic ethics.
Why such a
draconian response? Some analysts believe “fake news” had a role in flipping
the results of the election away from what the mainstream media had predicted —
away from their carefully groomed candidate. Their conscription of Google,
Facebook, and Twitter (which may institute something called ‘mute’ filters) in order to exact revenge
may cripple, if not destroy, an alternative media infrastructure that has grown
into a formidable challenge to the traditional media establishment.
Because of
how blatantly fascistic this move is, I struggle to respond to those who say,
‘Well, some of these sites are bad.’
Yes, some
of them are, but that’s not the point. The point is
that this is a Pandora’s Box scenario. Once we give the Corporate State the
ability to curate online content via punitive measures, we’ve bestowed upon
them the power to act as a gatekeeper for a stunning amount of public
knowledge. This is crony capitalism integrated into the very ethos of the
fourth estate, using groupthink and the free market to drown out sites that
don’t make the cut of acceptable. They will now be able to go through all news
stories and delegate carte blanche which ones are “false” and must, therefore,
be algorithmically and punitively castrated. They already used Russia as an
excuse to not acknowledge Wikileaks impeccably researched leaks. What won’t
they stoop to in order to conceal their future transgressions?
It will
actually likely end up resembling aspects of the TPP (Trans-Pacific
Partnership). In that (hopefully dead) trade agreement, corporate
tribunals would have been given the power to overrule national laws that hurt
their profits. Similarly, with the “fake news” control mechanism, the political-media-industrial
complex will be able to determine which stories are damaging to their
geopolitical and domestic narratives and then use Google, Facebook, and Twitter
to suffocate any news articles that challenge these narratives. Half-truths and
controversial op-eds will be cited as reasons for bans. Hacked information from
Wikileaks cables could be cited as specious and without corroboration, or, more
likely, Russian espionage (well, if Clinton were still around, at least).
There is
another parallel, and it’s nothing less than 9/11 itself. After the terrorist
attacks that tragically took the lives of over three thousand Americans, the
government used the nation’s fear and collective trauma to ram through the
Patriot Act, which created a matrix of laws that has been stripping us of our
civil liberties for over 15 years. It appears the political establishment wants
to use Clinton’s loss in a similar way: to bottle public anger over the
election into the deliverable censorship of grassroots media. I’ve been
claiming for months that the government’s next war would be on hackers and
publishers of hacked material. It appears I may have been wrong (oops, I guess
Google and Facebook ought to break our site over their knee). The next war
could be on independent media, who the establishment rightfully believes is one
of their biggest enemies at the moment. Who else can expose to everyday
Americans that the government and their corporate goon-slaves are full of the
worst kind of shit?
Let’s be
clear: there are certain sites on the list that publish bad journalism, sloppy
journalism, or straight up lies. And sometimes it’s easy to find them. After
all, Professor Melissa Zimdars (who contributed to the list) made the following astute point:
“Odd domain names generally equal odd and rarely truthful news.”
But whether or not some sites practice questionable editorial
standards is completely beside the point. By attacking the finances of
alternative media sites who publish controversial but well-researched
journalism, the government is blacklisting an entire movement. The precedent
Google and Facebook will establish with this move will have incalculable
ramifications on the future of alternative media and the Corporate State’s
ability to censor any story they deem dangerous. This is nothing short of a
two-step with fascism.
If they
don’t want “misleading” news, they better kill the networks.
Let’s
unpack this for a moment and pretend that truthful journalism is really what
Google and Facebook are after. If that were the case, they would need to cut
off the revenue streams of CNN, MSNBC, NBC, ABC, Fox, CBS, and all of the other mainstream news channels — you know, the
same ones that collectively manipulated us into accepting the Iraq War and the
subsequent regime change policies that have killed millions in the Middle East.
And, see, that’s precisely the reason the mainstream media would never be held
to these kinds of standards: they are a division of the State Department; they help
manufacture consensus. You see, their “fake”
news is important; the government’s fake news is real news.
Beyond just
propagating blatantly misleading and fraudulent news (I’d be
remiss if I didn’t mention that the link I just used, which catalogs instances
of mainstream media perpetuating false news, is on the new official list of
“fake” news), the networks have long been guilty of commission by omission —
curating the news cycles so that stories on critical issues like Standing Rock,
TPP and others get a fraction of the air time of, say, an
airplane crash or Trump’s latest gaffe.
This is Trojan horse for the government
In the Deep State (which you won’t hear even a
mention of on network news), the government operates as a series of revolving
doors between private defense contractors, media conglomerates, the
surveillance apparatus, and giant financial institutions. After the revelations of Snowden (source is another
from the list of fake news – be wary!), it became clear that the government was
spying on and data mining American citizens with impunity in ways far worse
than even 1984 had imagined.
Caught with their pants down, the government stopped,
right? No. In fact, they doubled down, except they did something smart:
they farmed it out to corporations and created a new synergistic surveillance
state. Without Silicon Valley, many of the NSA’s
transgressions could have never come to pass. Similarly, the government will
now outsource its censorship game to corporations. Ironically, it will be
Google and Facebook, two companies that represent the 21st century Information
Age, who will be holding the cuffs.
This is another example
corporations pinch hitting for the government, and it sets a horrifying
precedent.
What can you do?
1. Don’t listen to them.
Trust independent media (while being extremely discerning) over corporate
media.
2. Help in the effort to
create alternative and underground internet and social media infrastructure. A
huge part of this is holding independent media accountable to accurate
reporting, confirming sources, and obtaining original documents. Alt. media doesn’t
have the same financial resources available to them, but with the ubiquity of
the Internet, there’s no excuse for sloppy reporting.
3. Support alternative
media with donations and content sharing.
4. Boycott mainstream
media.
5. Tell Google and
Facebook you disagree with censorship.
6. Encrypt (always encrypt). This isn’t
necessary for some journalists — but if you are breaking a big story you should
be using anonymous web tools like Tor, a VPN, as well as using encryption to
transmit and unlock messages. Take a look at the Twitter account of
information activist Cory Doctorow. He lists a long string of numbers and
letters. That is his public key, otherwise known as asymmetric cryptography,
which allows him to communicate information privately and anonymously. In the
future, it will be unthinkable for journalists to not protect themselves, their
data, and their sources in this way.
