© Mr. Fish / Truthdig
The abolition of
net neutrality and the use of
algorithms by Facebook, Google, YouTube and Twitter to divert readers and viewers from progressive, left-wing and anti-war sites, along with demonizing as foreign agents the journalists who expose the crimes of corporate capitalism and imperialism, have
given the corporate state the power to destroy freedom of speech. Any state that accrues this kind of power will use it. And for that reason I traveled last week to Detroit to join
David North, the chairperson of the international editorial board of the World Socialist Web Site, in a
live-stream event calling for the formation of a broad front to block an escalating censorship while we still have a voice.
"The future of humanity is the struggle between humans that control machines and machines that control humans," Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, said in a statement issued in support of the event. "Between the democratization of communication and usurpation of communication by artificial intelligence. While the Internet has brought about a revolution in people's ability to educate themselves and others, the resulting democratic phenomena has shaken existing establishments to their core.
Google, Facebook and their Chinese equivalents, who are socially, logistically and financially integrated with existing elites, have moved to re-establish discourse control. This is not simply a corrective action. Undetectable mass social influence powered by artificial intelligence is an existential threat to humanity. While still in its infancy, the trends are clear and of a geometric nature. The phenomena differs in traditional attempts to shape cultural and political phenomena by operating at scale, speed and increasingly at a subtlety that eclipses human capacities."
In late April and early May the
World Socialist Web Site, which identifies itself as a
Trotskyite group that focuses on the crimes of capitalism, the plight of the working class and imperialism, began to see a steep decline in readership. The decline persisted into June. Search traffic to the World Socialist Web Site has been reduced by 75 percent overall.
And the site is not alone. AlterNet's search traffic is down 71 percent, Consortium News is down 72 percent, Global Research and Truthdig have seen declines. And the situation appears to be growing worse.
Comment: With universities having been mostly taken over by a post-modernist alt-left ideology, it seems the only place that remains where one can seek different perspectives is the internet. With almost every mainstream source being drenched in lies or at minimum, distortion of facts, those fed up them with crave sources where honest discourse can take place. The world has been so pervaded by lies and oppression, that simply wanting the freedom to find out the truth is revolutionary, and in that sense, we all are revolutionaries. And the social media giants are doing all they can to
stop that.
Comment: See also: "Let me see my son's lifeless body": Mother of man killed by cops in 'swatting' prank pleads with city to see her murdered son