We either take down Facebook and Google and turn them into tightly
regulated transparent public utilities available to all or they will destroy
what little is left of American democracy.
The RussiaGate Narrative has
been revealed as a Big Con (a.k.a. Nothing-Burger), but what's dangerously real
is the censorship that's being carried out by the for-profit monopolies
Facebook and Google on behalf of the status quo's Big Con.
This site got a taste of
Facebook-Google-Big-Media's Orwellian Authoritarian-Totalitarian censorship
back in 2016 when a shadowy fake-news site called PropOrNot aggregated
every major alt-media site that had published anything remotely skeptical of
the coronation of Hillary Clinton as president and labeled us all shills for
Russian propaganda.
Without any investigation of
the perps running the site or their fake-news methodology, The
Washington Post (Jeff Bezos' plaything) saw fit to promote the
fake-news on Page One as if it were journalistically legitimate. Why would a
newspaper that supposedly values the integrity of its content run with such
shameless fake-news propaganda? Because it fit the Post's own political agenda
and biases.
This is the essence of
Facebook-Google-Big-Media's Orwellian Authoritarian-Totalitarian censorship: sacrifice
accepted journalistic practice, free speech and transparency to promote an
absurdly obvious political and social agenda.
If there was any real justice
in America, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Google CEO Sundar Pichai should be
wearing prison jumpsuits for what Facebook and Google have done to American
democracy. Both of these monopolies have manipulated news feeds,
search results and what individuals are shown in complete secret, with zero
public oversight or transparency.
The damage to democracy wrought
by Facebook and Google is severe: free speech no longer exists except in name,
and what individuals see in search and social media feeds is designed to
manipulate them without their consent or knowledge--and for a fat profit. Whether Facebook
and Google are manipulating users for profit or to buy off Status Quo pressures
to start regulating these monopolistic totalitarian regimes or to align what
users see with their own virtue-signaling, doesn't matter.
What matters is that no one can
possibly know how Facebook and Google have rigged their algorithms and to what
purpose. The
typical corporation can buy political influence, but Facebook and Google are
manipulating the machinery of democracy itself in three ways:
1. They are
secretly censoring alternative media and skeptics of the status quo narratives.
2. They are
selling data and ads to anyone interested in manipulating voters and public
opinion.
3. They are
providing data to the National Security organs of the state which can then use
this data to compile dossiers on "enemies of the people," i.e.
skeptics and dissenters who question the "approved" context and
narrative.
That's a much more dangerous
type of power than buying political influence or manipulating public opinion by
openly publishing biased "commentary."
We all understand how America's
traditional Corporate Media undermines democracy: recall how every
time Bernie Sanders won a Democratic primary in 2016, The New York Times and
The Washington Post "reported" the news in small typeface in a
sidebar, while every Hillary Clinton primary win was trumpeted in large
headlines at the top of page one.
But this sort of manipulation
is visible; what Google and Facebook do is invisible. What their
algorithms do is invisible, and the shadow banning and other forms
of invisible censorship cannot be easily traced.
A few of us can trace shadow
banning because we have access to our site's server data. Please consider
the data of Google searches and direct links from Facebook to oftwominds.com
from November 2016 and November 2018:
Nov. 2016:
Google Searches: 36,779
Nov. 2016: links from Facebook: 9,888
Nov. 2016: links from Facebook: 9,888
Nov. 2018:
Google Searches: 12,671
Nov. 2018: links from Facebook: 859
Nov. 2018: links from Facebook: 859
Oftwominds.com has been around
since 2005 and consistently draws around 250,000 page views monthly (via
oftwominds.com and my mirror site on blogspot, which is owned/operated by
Google. Interestingly, traffic to that site has been less affected by shadow banning; Coincidence? You
decide....).
Given the consistency of my
visitor traffic over the years, it's "interesting" how drastically
the site's traffic with Google and Facebook has declined in a mere two years. How is
this shadow
banning not
Orwellian Authoritarian-Totalitarian censorship? It's akin to China's Orwellian
Social Credit system but for private profit.
It wouldn't surprise me to find
my photo airbrushed out of group photos on Facebook and Google just as the
Soviet propaganda organs did when someone fell out of favor in the 1930s.
Fortunately,
oftwominds.com isn't dependent on Facebook or Google for its traffic; other
content creators who were skeptical of RussiaGate are not so fortunate. One of
the implicit goals of shadow banning and filters is to destroy the income of
dissenting sites without the content creators knowing why their income plummeted.
Strip dissenters of their
income and you strip them of the ability to dissent. Yea for
"free speech" controlled by for-profit monopolies!
Where's the "level playing
field" of free speech? As long as Facebook and Google are free to censor
and filter in secret, there is no free speech in America. All we have is a
simulacrum of free speech in which parroting "approved" narratives is
promoted and dissent is censored/banned--but without anyone noticing or even
being able to tell what's been filtered, censored or banned.
So when are we going to tackle
privately held monopolies which are selling user data to the highest bidder,
obliterating free speech in secret and manipulating news feeds and search to
promote hidden agendas? I've argued (see links below) that the solution is very
simple:
1. Regulate
Facebook and Google as public utilities. Ban them from collecting and selling
user data to anyone, including federal agencies.
2. Allow a
modest profit to each firm via display adverts that are shown equally to every
user.
3. Require
any and all search/content filters and algorithms be made public, i.e.
published daily.
4. Any
executive or employee of these corporations who violates these statutes will
face criminal felony charges and be exposed to civil liability lawsuits from
users or content providers who were shadow-banned or their right to free speech
was proscribed or limited by filters or algorithms.
There is no intrinsic right for
privately held corporations to establish monopolies that can manipulate and
filter free speech in secret to maximize profits and secret influence. We either take
down Facebook and Google and turn them into tightly regulated transparent
public utilities available to all or they will destroy what little is left of
American democracy.
I recently
addressed these invisible (but oh-so profitable) mechanisms in a series of
essays:
Are Facebook and Google the New Colonial Powers? September
18, 2017
The Demise of Dissent: Why the Web Is Becoming Homogenized November
17, 2017
Addictions: Social Media & Mobile Phones Fall From Grace November
24, 2017
Pathfinding our Destiny: Preventing the Final Fall of Our Democratic Republic ($6.95 ebook, $12 print, $13.08 audiobook): Read the first section for free in PDF format.
My new mystery The Adventures of the Consulting Philosopher: The Disappearance of Drake is a ridiculously affordable $1.29 (Kindle) or $8.95 (print); read the first chapters for free (PDF)
My book Money and Work Unchained is now $6.95 for the Kindle
ebook and $15 for the print edition. Read the first section for free
in PDF format.
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