More Escalations In Online Censorship

More Escalations In Online Censorship

April 15, 2022

Going Rogue With Caitlin Johnstone

It's not healthy to seek control over what people say and think. Free speech is important not because it makes people sad when they don't get to say what they want, but because the free exchange of ideas and information is how we collectively bring awareness to problems, change minds, stir the zeitgeist, and, if necessary, organize mass resistance.

And that's exactly why the powerful work to prevent the free exchange of ideas and information. If people are permitted to stand at the center of a digital public square and send an unauthorized idea or piece of information viral if it resonates with others, that is a direct threat to status quo power structures. It's not about saving Ukrainians, ending Covid misinformation, preventing violence, or any of the other excuses they've been rolling out since 2016.

It's about censoring the internet.

YouTube has been deleting videos disputing the US government narrative about Russian war crimes in Bucha, Ukraine, validating concerns we've discussed previously that Silicon Valley platforms would begin censoring anyone who challenges the authorized version of events in this war.

"By the way, my video 'Bucha: More Lies' has been deleted [by] YouTube’s censors," reads a recent tweet by Gonzalo Lira.

"My stream last night on RBN was censored on Youtube after debunking the Bucha Massacre narrative," Revolutionary Blackout Network reports.

It would seem that this clears up what YouTube meant when it said last month, "Our Community Guidelines prohibit content denying, minimizing or trivializing well-documented violent events. We are now removing content about Russia’s invasion in Ukraine that violates this policy."

There has as yet been no investigation into what happened in Bucha by any international body and there are plenty of arguments to be made questioning aspects of the Official Story that westerners are being aggressively force fed by the narrative control machine of the US-centralized empire. Which would mean that YouTube is defining "well-documented" as "unproven assertions by the US government."

YouTube is also demonetizing content that is more broadly critical of the US/NATO/Ukraine side of the war.

“Due to the war in Ukraine, we will pause monetization of content that exploits, dismisses, or condones the war," a notice that's being sent to users reads. "This pause includes, but is not limited to, claims that imply victims are responsible for their own tragedy or similar instances of victim blaming, such as claims that Ukraine is committing genocide or deliberately attacking its own citizens.”

And can I just add here that as a survivor of rape and abuse it makes me want to scream my fucking throat out to see phrases like "victim blaming" used to suppress speech criticizing the unipolarist geostrategic agendas of the most powerful and destructive government on earth. It's extremely obnoxious how common this disgusting power-serving line has become.

It's probably also worth noting at this point that YouTube is owned by Google, which is a US military contractor and which has been inseparably intertwined with US intelligence agencies from its very inception.

The radius of what these government-tied oligarchic Silicon Valley megacorporations deem worthy of censorship has been getting wider and wider with every major news story: from eliminating Russian trolls, to thwarting domestic extremists, to protecting election integrity, to stopping Covid misinformation. Now they're just openly saying they're censoring those who disagree with the world's most powerful government about a war. The excuses change from day to day, but the only constant is that we're always told the solution is more internet censorship.

https://odysee.com/@ProgressiveTruthSeekers:3/More-Escalations-In-Online-Censorship:2

Read more: https://caitlinjohnstone.substack.com/p/more-escalations-in-online-censorship?s=r

https://soundcloud.com/going_rogue/more-escalations-in-online-censorship