- MBTI
- None
I think the majority of us have become aware of the censorship going on in social media platforms in the United States or platforms run by United States based companies since the pandemic. There is a possibility this level of censorship was going on long before that point but only became obvious to the general population at that point.
According to this article,
This thread is not going to be about the pandemic censorship though; I am just providing it as context to set up that this has been ongoing since at least 2020 if not before. This could easily loop into my dead internet theory thread where a majority of internet websites have sort of 'vanished' because they are indexed by google and not showing up on search results.
The control that these monopolies such as google and facebook have on our ability of locate information, in combination with their relationship with the United States Government and willingness to perform censorship on instruction, is quite troubling. I have to wonder how far we are from China level censorship. If there were stages of censorship, which are we in? How far will this go?
Ok, so we've established pretty clearly that some social media sites like Facebook are claiming that the government required them to censor information.
Microsoft on the other hand has willingly participated in upholding firewalls in China and censoring information.
What is the most recent incident?
The active removal of Joe Rogan's interview with Trump on Youtube search results. This is a real, documented thing that as far as I can measure started happening a couple of days after it was released. When it was first dropped, it was recommended in my feed as most Joe Rogan videos are since I am subscribed. But then a couple of days later when I searched for it, it did not appear on the first page of results despite having millions of views. I found it on page three. Even logging out and searching had the same results. This was reported by others, according to Forbes:
I started to research this thing, "Polymarket" and the possible social engineering motivations behind it. At first I thought it was data mining but when you look into it looks like they are more trying to influence public opinion and views especially in regards to the election but in reality that is a hook to get people on the platform, there is a ton of social engineering going on there- Peter Thiel, Cambridge Analytica are backing this platform. Suspicious. And the most suspicious thing is that they are a sponsor of The Young Turks, a left-wing political platform which you ordinarily wouldn't see associated with this. So I was, dumbly, trying to find youtube videos people have made about this because I have seen at least one from a small time youtuber that i am subscribed to on the topic. Despite putting in the key words, not only does this youtube video I have already watched not come up, but there are no relevant videos that pull up. In fact, none of the videos they show are even loosely connected to the keywords I put in. On a platform with millions and millions of videos, and I know at least 1 video exists with those keywords, nothing pulls up??
Further down the rabbit hole, I use chat-gpt and other ai models to ask for a website which can provide a solution to bypass youtube's algorithm- basically a third party site that will search for me. I get given two options: searchmyvideo and petey vid. I google these (remember, google is tied to youtube) and no results related to this websites. there are some websites that are like 'top 10 alternates' and sort of explain what these websites are, but all links to these websites go to either:
a. a broken webpage, this website does not exist
or
b. an insecure web page warning me to go back, that attackers may be trying to steal my information.
I keep seeing these HUGE gaps in the internet, broken websites and links, mentions of things existing that do not exist, trying to access something and finding you have to jump through hoops to actually access something.
This is nuts, right?
According to this article,
This thread is not going to be about the pandemic censorship though; I am just providing it as context to set up that this has been ongoing since at least 2020 if not before. This could easily loop into my dead internet theory thread where a majority of internet websites have sort of 'vanished' because they are indexed by google and not showing up on search results.
The control that these monopolies such as google and facebook have on our ability of locate information, in combination with their relationship with the United States Government and willingness to perform censorship on instruction, is quite troubling. I have to wonder how far we are from China level censorship. If there were stages of censorship, which are we in? How far will this go?
Ok, so we've established pretty clearly that some social media sites like Facebook are claiming that the government required them to censor information.
Microsoft on the other hand has willingly participated in upholding firewalls in China and censoring information.
What is the most recent incident?
The active removal of Joe Rogan's interview with Trump on Youtube search results. This is a real, documented thing that as far as I can measure started happening a couple of days after it was released. When it was first dropped, it was recommended in my feed as most Joe Rogan videos are since I am subscribed. But then a couple of days later when I searched for it, it did not appear on the first page of results despite having millions of views. I found it on page three. Even logging out and searching had the same results. This was reported by others, according to Forbes:
Ok- so its anecdotal. But we're having a discussion so might as well have a starting point.
I started to research this thing, "Polymarket" and the possible social engineering motivations behind it. At first I thought it was data mining but when you look into it looks like they are more trying to influence public opinion and views especially in regards to the election but in reality that is a hook to get people on the platform, there is a ton of social engineering going on there- Peter Thiel, Cambridge Analytica are backing this platform. Suspicious. And the most suspicious thing is that they are a sponsor of The Young Turks, a left-wing political platform which you ordinarily wouldn't see associated with this. So I was, dumbly, trying to find youtube videos people have made about this because I have seen at least one from a small time youtuber that i am subscribed to on the topic. Despite putting in the key words, not only does this youtube video I have already watched not come up, but there are no relevant videos that pull up. In fact, none of the videos they show are even loosely connected to the keywords I put in. On a platform with millions and millions of videos, and I know at least 1 video exists with those keywords, nothing pulls up??
Further down the rabbit hole, I use chat-gpt and other ai models to ask for a website which can provide a solution to bypass youtube's algorithm- basically a third party site that will search for me. I get given two options: searchmyvideo and petey vid. I google these (remember, google is tied to youtube) and no results related to this websites. there are some websites that are like 'top 10 alternates' and sort of explain what these websites are, but all links to these websites go to either:
a. a broken webpage, this website does not exist
or
b. an insecure web page warning me to go back, that attackers may be trying to steal my information.
I keep seeing these HUGE gaps in the internet, broken websites and links, mentions of things existing that do not exist, trying to access something and finding you have to jump through hoops to actually access something.
This is nuts, right?
