YouTube, whose corporate owner Google is
arguably the most powerful company on earth, is
now deleting user videos which claim the US election was
fraudulent.
YouTube’s
official statement on its decision to do this is very
revealing, not so much for what it says as for what it does not
say.
At no point does the video publishing platform attempt to argue
that it is removing these videos because they jeopardize anyone’s
health or safety, as it did when it began deleting
videos deemed to be spreading misinformation about
Covid-19.
At no point does it attempt to argue that these videos are
inciting violence, as it did when it
began deleting QAnon videos.
At no point does it claim that these videos are misleading
voters, as it initially began collaborating with the US government
to prevent, since all the voting is over and done with.
It’s simply deleting the videos because they are believed to
be wrong.�This is an important distinction, because it’s a marked
deviation from the previous policy of content deletion used by
YouTube and other new media platforms.
2/ Yesterday was the safe
harbor deadline. Now that enough states certified their
Presidential election results, we’ll remove any content published
today (or anytime after) that alleges widespread fraud or errors
changed the 2020 U.S. Presidential election outcome.— YouTubeInsider (@YouTubeInsider)
December 9, 2020
“Yesterday was the safe harbor deadline for the U.S.
Presidential election and enough states have certified their
election results to determine a President-elect,†YouTube writes.
“Given that, we will start removing any piece of content uploaded
today (or anytime after) that misleads people by alleging that
widespread fraud or errors changed the outcome of the 2020 U.S.
Presidential election, in line with our approach towards historical
U.S. Presidential elections. For example, we will remove videos
claiming that a Presidential candidate won the election due to
widespread software glitches or counting errors. We will begin
enforcing this policy today, and will ramp up in the weeks to
come.â€
I neither know nor care whether the sort of election fraud
alleged to have taken place in the contest between Joe Biden or
Donald Trump actually happened; I know the processes by which
candidates are elevated to run in a US general election are corrupt
and rigged from top to bottom, so the question of whether
additional manipulation took place between two
establishment-approved imperialist oligarch lackeys in a pretend
election is not particularly interesting to me. But this new move
by YouTube is a major escalation in the continually escalating
rollout of internet censorship protocols by US government-tied
Silicon Valley megacorporations.
Even if America did not have the single most flawed election
system in the entire western world (and
it does), and even if it had been conclusively proven beyond a
shadow of a doubt that no election fraud of any sort took place
(and it hasn’t), it would still be a massive escalation beyond
previous online censorship protocols to begin censoring people
simply because they are wrong. People are allowed to be wrong. A
free society allows people the right to voice wrong beliefs because
the only alternative is creating a monolithic Ministry of Truth
which has authority over what the right and wrong beliefs are.
Those of us who’ve been warning of the dangers of
government-aligned plutocratic corporations lowering their
standards for silencing speech further and further were
not committing a slippery slope fallacy; it’s not fallacious
to warn of a slippery slope when the slope is demonstrably real.
The fact that we’ve been methodically paced from accepting the
cross-platform deletion of Alex Jones a couple of years ago to
random internet users being silenced for no other reason than
expressing wrongthink today shows us the slope is very real and
very consequential, and our slide into information totalitarianism
will continue if something major does not change.
“Do I believe the 2020
election was stolen? No. But I also didn’t believe the election
was stolen from Hillary Clinton in 2016, when the Internet was
overrun with conspiracy theories nearly identical to the ones now
being propagated by Trump fans.” https://t.co/nvH0isGvaN— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi)
December 11, 2020
Matt Taibbi has
written a solid article condemning YouTube’s latest ramp-up
and highlighting the double standard in the way Democrats have been
pushing narratives about Trump colluding with Russia to
fraudulently steal the 2016 election for four years with no
consequences whatsoever while Trump supporters are banned from
doing essentially the exact same thing. I would add that the
primary source of this double standard is not ideological bias
(though that’s surely a factor as well) but the coziness these
Silicon Valley tech giants have formed with US government agencies
who signed off on Russiagate but not on Trump’s claims. It’s
not so much a liberal bias as it is a US intelligence cartel
bias.
In reality, there was never any more evidence for liberal claims
of Russia interfering with the US election in any meaningful way
than there is for election fraud in 2020. Actual journalists and
impartial social media platforms would have recognized the
indisputable fact that the Russian hacking narrative was
extremely porous and
remains completely unproven, and the narrative about Russian
memes swaying the election
is a complete joke. The only thing giving the Democrats’
claims more narrative weight than those of the Republicans today is
that one was endorsed by the US intelligence cartel (the same US
intelligence cartel which just so happened to wind up advancing
multiple preexisting agendas using Russiagate) and the other
was not. That’s it.
Those who understood that
whoever controls the narrative controls the world and that
plutocrat-controlled mass media is the linchpin of the oligarchic
status quo were very excited about the arrival of the internet,
because they understood its information-democratizing potential.
Now we’re all watching those hopes slowly eroded into nothing as
the same power structures which control and influence the
mainstream media now work to take full control over online
information.
But Not Videos Claiming Donald
Trump is a Russian Agent, Because That’s the Acceptable Election
Conspiracy Theory https://t.co/gtfz4WZTlX— Aaron Maté (@aaronjmate)
December 9, 2020
“On average 88% of the videos in top 10 search results related
to elections came from authoritative news sources (amongst the rest
are things like newsy late-night shows, creator videos and
commentary),†YouTube boasts in the aforementioned statement on
its deletion of wrongthink election videos. “And the most viewed
channels and videos are from news channels like NBC and CBS.â€
As though rigging your algorithms to give users results which
link to the same plutocratic media outlets who’ve helped deceive
the public about every war and continuously manipulate them into
believing status quo politics totally work is something to be proud
of.
If information which isn’t approved by the powerful continues
to be squeezed into smaller and smaller fringe circles, the
information-democratizing potential which once gave revolutionary
thinkers so much hope will be completely nullified, and all that
will remain is a network which allows establishment power
structures to distribute propaganda much faster than they could
back in the days of the old media. Here’s hoping our rulers fail
in their attempts to do this, and that we succeed in our desire to
stop them.
_____________________
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