by James Wesley Rawles, Survival Blog:
A wave of Internet censorship is sweeping the globe. This censorship is no longer just the nefarious work of totalitarian nations. Many western nations are experiencing their own brand of censorship that is being promulgated by ostensibly “private” companies. (Although many of these are near monopoly utilities that could be classified as public accommodations.)
Dozens of conservative, pro-gun videobloggers and news outlets have been demonetized by YouTube in the past two years. By flagging these sites as “not family friendly”, viewers must now toggle “Restricted Mode: Off” and even when they do, advertisements are no longer displayed. This has happened to gun vloggers like Hickok45, Demolition Ranch, and many others. And even some vloggers who only occasionally mention guns (such as Wranglerstar) have also been intermittently blacklisted. This effectively zeros their advertising revenue. The goal of YouTube liberal, globalist, and anti-gun management is clear: They want to drive these sites out of business by cutting them off from their revenue stream.
Meanwhile, Google is deliberately “de-listing” conservative sites from showing up on the first page of results in Google searches. Going far beyond just a deniable search engine “algorithm glitch”, Google has been caught hiring outside contracting firms to manipulate data, deliberately assigning “low to medium” or “poor to low” reliability to numerous news outlets including InfoWars and Natural News. They have done the same to whistleblowing sites like Wikileaks. By pushing down their search engine relevance, Google is marginalizing these sites. Google’s goal is clear: They want to remove these sites from the public eye.
Google was also caught red-handed during the 2016 presidential election cycle in manipulating the “auto fill” feature of their search engine window in completing search phrases that involved the name Hillary Clinton. This was well documented by Fortune magazine.
Concurrently, Twitter has “shadow banned” some users.
Facebook has also been caught systematically censoring posts.
Now, more than ever before, Facebook is using artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms to flag and delete “offensive” content. Not surprisingly, it is conservative and pro-national sovereignty sites that seem to be flagged most often.
The work of the AI algorithms often has tragi-comic results. Most recently, a blogger posted the Declaration of Independence to his Facebook page, in several installments, in honor of Independence Day. One portion of the Declaration was quickly flagged as “hate speech” by Facebook’s AI, and automagically deleted. Facebook administrators later apologized and restored the post. But this illustrates the just how arbitrary the AI juggernaut can be.
To make matters even worse, two years ago Amazon.com slashed the commissions for all of their “Amazon Associates” by an average of 45%. This has made it difficult for many bloggers to cover their costs.
The end result of these many maneuverings has been to marginalize and demonetize web sites, blogs, and vlogs of those who are deemed “politically incorrect.” By suppressing and manipulating search engine results, these sites are not just made unprofitable, they also disappear from public view. This is blatant censorship and an outright stifling of free public discourse.
Through the use of AI and paid opinion molders, the general direction and sequence of 21st Century Internet censorship appears to be:
In the face of this revisionism, censorship, and full-on site deletion, those who have been targeted have begun to fight back. We recognize that as private firms, companies like Facebook and Google can operate their businesses as they see fit. (The freedom of association also implies the freedom of disassociation. The phrase “We reserve the right to refuse service to anyone” still applies.) So, rather than by filing fruitless lawsuits, we have chosen to find alternative outlets and methodologies. These include: