06.30.20
Gemini version available ♊︎Feeling Vindicated About the Harms of Social Control Media Being Widely Recognised
Social Control Media is like smoking. It only gives an impression of (temporary) calm.
Summary: The cleansing of social control media sites reinforces our long-held views about social control media in general
MIXER is dead (much like Microsoft’s morale) while LinkedIn 'cancels' people/businesses and there’s plenty of press coverage right now about a number of social control media sites — notably Twitch and Google’s YouTube — banning people/channels for hate speech (not sure whether to use quotes, scare quotes or none at all). There’s also a corporate boycott against Facebook; companies that themselves deserve a boycott refuse to pay for Facebook ads. In some cases that extends to Twitter. Even Microsoft, which is very close to Facebook, joined the boycott. It’ll be in our next batch of Daily Links.
Notice the trend.
“In our case, the block/ban was simply due to the fact that we expose corruption. No rudeness, no falsehoods, just embarrassing leaks and accurate information, which EPO workers were happy to supply us with.”As readers are aware, Techrights is blocked from inside the European Patent Office (EPO). This is the only block we’re aware of (we’re accessible everywhere in China; we rechecked this very recently just to verify). António Campinos, who tomorrow celebrates 2 years at the Office, kept this ban initially imposed by Benoît Battistelli. In our case, the block/ban was simply due to the fact that we expose corruption. No rudeness, no falsehoods, just embarrassing leaks and accurate information, which EPO workers were happy to supply us with.
Third parties like social control media/networks that are centralised (federation means that applies to some degree to decentralised ones too) are censorship enablers. There are many problems associated with them. For instance, people can have thrown at them disgusting speech that they wouldn’t otherwise stumble upon (they would not access tasteless sites); conversely, some of that speech will be choked without reason or recourse. So we think that a proper way to handle society is to let disgusting sites have their own tasteless audience and keep people apart, rather than constantly fighting (divisive and misleading social control media is what I left behind three weeks ago). No need for censorship; merit can do its thing. The World Wide Web has long had Nazi sites around (even literally Nazi); that did not jump at people’s face (unless they actually bothered visiting such sites). The supposed ‘utopia’ of social control media/networks presumed “one happy family” mindset; instead, they use divisiveness (which they contribute further to) to increase user engagement and push ads (brainwash), manipulate election/referendum outcomes etc.
“The supposed ‘utopia’ of social control media/networks presumed “one happy family” mindset; instead, they use divisiveness (which they contribute further to) to increase user engagement and push ads (brainwash), manipulate election/referendum outcomes etc.”As we said before, if you are not in social control media/networks, do not get started! You’re not missing anything of value. Get a decent RSS reader, subscribe to sites you trust and off you go. Nobody but the ISP can censor you (and there are workarounds in case that happens too; de-platforming doesn’t work at DNS level). █
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