By Chris Black
The apparent freedom was given to us first by the newspapers, if you’re old enough to remember the rustle of papers flipped feverishly for decades to find information and enjoy opinions. The newspaper was quickly dethroned by radio and television.
Television usually features snippets of news, and most are thin in terms of the quality of writing and documentation. It’s fast-forward. The TV was preferred for movies and shows, not for bomb shell information.
Then, shyly, after 2005, the Internet began to take over the media market. A few dozen news items were released on the newspaper’s website, which posted all the information around noon. Initially, bloggers specializing in various fields were ridiculed, then they became sources of information for TV and print journals. Then the newspapers made a mistake: they started to publish on their own site the news that appeared on paper the next day. They put them on at 10 or 12 at night. They sabotaged themselves and died from self-inflicted wounds.
Another big problem was that transnational corporations were allowed to buy all newspapers and local TV/radio stations, hence we ended up with 5-6 corporations literally controlling the entire mass-media, and that’s Bill Clinton’s fault.
The real deadly blow to the legacy media was represented by social networks: Google, Facebook and YouTube, which are all owned by the same people who control Hollywood and mainstream media, i.e. the flow of information (read propaganda) in US is under foreign control.
And in case you didn’t know, Democracy is basically rule by the media. Who he controls the official narrative, controls the political process, including elections.
Getting back to our story, if you couldn’t comment on the news on legacy media sites generally speaking, you could do that on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube etc. Suddenly, readers could nuance the information. It was total freedom.
Even if you were right or wrong when criticizing or praising an article, the reader was part of the game and felt important. The Internet has given us this impression of absolute freedom. Then there were more and more rules, and in the end abuse and censorship.
If you are not on Facebook, Twitter or YouTube, you do not exist, and Big Tech companies have turned into prosecutors, judges and executioners. You have no appeal to their decisions.
The Trump case is emblematic of internet injustice. The character is indifferent to me, I even criticized him when it was the case. But he is the president of the United States. You can’t punch him in the mouth while letting dictators and terrorists express themselves on the same social networks.
Of course, as any libertarian will tell you, it is not illegal, because the respective social network makes the rules and changes them during the game as they see fit, even if they are not the same for everyone, but highly subjective.
Donald Trump is the president of the most powerful country in the world and he has been left more or less speechless.
Now let’s get back to us, the peasants. The same thing can happen to us at any time, regardless of whether or not we are right when we post content on social networks.
Yes, it is our fault that we’re using them, but it’s also the fault of the governments that let the virtual freedom virus flood us, manipulate us and control absolutely every movement on the internet. See now the latest story with WhatsApp, a formerly independent app later bought by Zuckerberg, which now delivers absolutely all your information to Facebook, the parent company of both networks.
If you are cool with that, you stay in the game. If not, you no longer have access to world’s largest messaging app and/or social network.
So, the con was very smart: first they offered you drugs for free, like all pushers do, until you became addicted, then they came with the bill. The problem cannot be solved with a detox, because it is about billions of people. Specifically, almost all the inhabitants of the planet.
Now, about what’s going on in the US: every time communists take power, millions of people die.
The first thing they do is to take over all communication and ban the gatherings of people. All to crush resistance.
In the US, Democrat operatives openly talk about killing conservatives, taking away their children and putting them in reeducation camps.
Antifa uses YouTube and Twitter to dox conservatives and threaten violence. They are not banned.
America is a Republic, ruled by the states. That is how the constitution was set up.
The United States of America was never meant to have a centralized government holding all the power.
The same should apply to the internet.
I’m not sure why a libertarian should concern themselves with the independent decisions made by individuals at private companies/s