I've written plenty of times in the past about the ways corporate media and IT giants like Google, Facebook and Twitter are engaging in stealth censorship. As we are getting distracted by the daily outrage of politics and the sensationalism peddled by corporate media, social network conglomerations are using algorithms and key word suppression to shutter independent voices and non-affiliated journalists. The end of net neutrality will only increase this form of corporate fascism to unimaginable levels as internet service providers will be given free rein to create classes of service where corporations get to be more equal than people.
If you listen to people like Lee Camp, Caitlin Johnstone and Tim Black to name a few-voices who refuse to accept corporate narratives and refuse to stay in the narrow lanes of ideology and identity - all will tell you the dangers of letting the public square be hijacked and monopolized by plutocrats and moneyed interests. We speak on these things because we know first hand the experience of being censored. When articles at Ghion Journal get shared by thousands and yet you search on Facebook and find only a few highlighted or when our pages gets deleted by citing a nebulous reference to "community standards", it becomes evident that there is a concerted effort to marginalize all but mainstream media.
Just two days ago, Facebook restricted my access because I had the audacity to post an article that encouraged people to shop less and spend more time with their families [read Buying Presents vs Being Present]. I ask you, does encouraging family time instead of driving ourselves into debt for the holidays constitute hate speech? I continue to see some of the crudest and vile things scroll on my timeline and Facebook accepts this level of indecency as meeting their "community standards". Yet when people speak against corporatism and consolidated power in DC, that is when they get the hammer lowered on them. There is a reason for this of course; corporations have initiated a hostile takeover of all levers of power including the Federal government. Ergo, corporations are government. Consequently, what we are witnessing is government silencing by way of corporate censorship to sideline people who have the temerity to speak truth to power.
Notice how some people post status updates and then write "see link in article"? That is because they are trying to get around Facebook's censorship where articles that originate from publications who have not bought ads from them are suppressed. Know which articles get top billing in Facebook's news feeds? Corporate media and journalists who buy ads that's who. The rest of us are not only diminished, in more and more instances, we are actively getting censored. Instead of maintaining a marketplace of ideas, social media companies are propagating a form of apartheid where only the "first class" (establishment) get to initiate the conversation while the rest of us just speak on demand. It's only going to get worse from here as politicians, pundits and plutocrats team up to eradicate free speech and the very notion of a free press. This is the very topic I discussed in the Ghion Cast at the bottom of this article.
Read the rest here.
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