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Please do not use the censored /r/bitcoin or Bitcointalk. Use /r/btc instead.

Anyone who has been following Bitcoin closely over the past couple of years should by now be well aware of the issues being debated and the existence of censorship in some of Bitcoins most prominent communities. For the unaware, a primer:

The Bitcoin network is currently at max load, and today is capable of processing approximately three transactions per second. This was not part of the original design of the Bitcoin protocol, and the 1MB block size limit was added in 2010 by Satoshi Nakamoto himself as a temporary anti-spam measure.

Because bitcoins were so cheap at the time, and the number of bitcoin users so few, making transactions on the bitcoin network was effectively free. The concern was that a malicious entity could simply flood the network with transactions, filling up blocks and bogging down transaction speeds for legitimate users. Because transactions were so cheap to make, such an attack would have cost the perpetrator very little to pull off, and could have crippled the entire bitcoin network while it was still in its infancy. Former bitcoin lead maintainer Gavin Andresen addressed this attack in a blog post, writing:

But even this one megabyte limit was hardly restrictive; at the time the average block size ranged from 200 bytes to occasional peaks of around one kilobyte. The one megabyte limit was meant to handle new user influx and peak period transactions up to several thousand times what the average daily transaction volume was at the time. In October 2010, Satoshi Nakamoto even laid out his plan for increasing the maximum block size:

Pretty simple, right?

One would think. Since the limit was introduced in 2010, there have been countless discussions on the necessity as well as the methods that would be used to increase this limit, and Bitcoins transaction processing capabilities with it. Those attempts have repeatedly been blocked by a small group of developers, and in recent years discussion of increasing the limit has been censored from some of Bitcoins largest discussion forums, all of which are moderated by the same individual, who posts using the handle Theymos. What is forbidden includes any discussion of code changes that propose increasing the limitation.

Some dont believe the censorship is problematic, or refuse to acknowledge that it is censorship at all. Heres Blockstream CEO Adam Back:

And Blockstream CTO and Bitcoin Core developer, Gregory Maxwell:

And Blockstream contractor and Bitcoin Core developer Luke-jr:

And Bitcoin Core developer Peter Todd:

And /r/bitcoin moderator /u/frankenmint:

Based on this outpouring of support from certain interested parties, its almost as if theyd have you believe there were no censorship happening at all! Pay no attention to the fact that /u/theymos has been shown to have financial dealings with Blockstream. Lets take a look at censorship on /r/bitcoin through the ages:

May 7th, 2015. Using a tool called UnReddit, we can see a large number of deleted comments in a thread on increasing the block size.

August 9th, 2015. A highly upvoted thread (archive)(705 points, 89% upvoted) on /r/bitcoin receives three Reddit gildings for asking:

/r/bitcoin moderator /u/BashCo posts a response and is heavily downvoted when he says:

Again for the uninitiated: the moderators of /r/bitcoin attempt to classify discussion of Bitcoin code changes (only the ones that attempt to increase the limit) as off-topic on the basis of being altcoins. Altcoins are entirely different currencies, with their own ledgers and tokens, and are not inter-operable with Bitcoin. BitcoinXT, on the other hand, runs on the same Bitcoin network as other Bitcoin software, uses the same tokens, and the same ledger, and is interoperable. A user running the BitcoinXT software is perfectly capable of transacting bitcoins with a user running the Bitcoin Core software.

August 13th, 2015. /u/aminok has his post (archive) deleted, in which he asked the mods: please dont try to impose your will on the Bitcoin community. He posted about it in an uncensored Bitcoin subreddit.

August 14th, 2015. The very next day /u/aminok was then banned for posting a thread asking How is the Bitcoin community supposed to build consensus to do a hard fork when the /r/bitcoin mods ban any discussion of a hard fork proposal that does not have consensus? (archive). The thread was deleted after reaching the #1 spot on /r/bitcoin.

Aminok posted about the banning in an uncensored subreddit. /r/bitcoin moderator /u/StarMaged chimed in to offer this reasoning:

August 15th, 2015. A now [deleted] post (archive) on /r/bitcoin calling for the moderators to step down garnered more than 2,800 upvotes (91% upvoted), making it one of the highest-voted threads of /r/bitcoin history. The community demonstrated consensus (heh) that the current /r/bitcoin mod squad was corrupt, participating in censorship, and needed to go.

Ironically, in the same thread, /r/bitcoin moderator /u/BashCo says that he supports consensus, before admitting that he is regrettably censoring posts.

August 16th, 2015. Moderator /u/BashCo admits that the mods are participating in censorship:

The same day, user /u/SatoshisGhost was banned for mentioning BitcoinXT.

A popular Bitcoin webcomic artist /u/raisethelimit was given a 30 day ban for trolling when he tried posting two of his comics there.

/u/Jackten was given a 7-day ban for attempting to discuss Bitcoin-XT. In the comments, user /u/dnivi3 posts about how none of his posts are getting through either, and then edits his post to say that he has been banned from /r/bitcoin (presumably for his comment in /r/bitcoin_uncensored).

The same day, during this massive purge of users, /r/bitcoin head moderator /u/Theymos posted a thread titled, Call for more moderators (archive). The thread was heavily downvoted, and sits at 0 points (43% upvoted). His post includes the phrase: Dont apply if you disagree with /r/Bitcoin policy.

August 18th, 2015. /u/SundoshiNakatoto has his post (archive) deleted for encouraging others to educate themselves on which code they like best (Core or XT) and running a full node. The deletion was discussed in an uncensored subreddit.

August 19th, 2015. /r/bitcoin moderator /u/jratcliff63367 makes a post to Lets Talk Bitcoin titled Confessions of an /r/bitcoin moderator. He observes:

August 24th, 2015. /u/chinawat is banned for noticing and pointing out all the recent bans.

August 25th, 2015. /u/SwagPokerz explains how the /r/bitcoin moderators have manipulated the subreddits CSS to mask the presence of deleted comments.

With /r/bitcoins custom CSS (70,000 lines!), deleted comments are masked, and the new comment tree will display like this:

Worth noting here is that Reddits moddiquette guidelines tell moderators not to Hide reddit ads or purposely mislead users with custom CSS.

August 29th, 2015. Ten days after his anti-censorship post on Lets Talk Bitcoin, former /r/bitcoin moderator /u/jratcliff63367 announces that he has been removed from his role. In the thread, /u/theymos chimes in to explain why he removed jratcliff:

September 4th, 2015. /u/hardleft121 announces that he has been removed as a moderator of /r/bitcoin for inactivity (archive). /u/hardleft121 is a bit of a legend in the Bitcoin subreddits for his frequent generous tipping of bitcoin users, sometimes even giving away hundreds of dollars at a time.

The same day, he makes a post to /r/bitcoin (archive) that garners 403 points and the sympathy and outrage of /r/bitcoin users. In the thread, it is revealed that /u/SeansOutpost was not removed as moderator, despite also being quite inactive as a mod. When asked what he thinks of the censorship, /u/SeansOutpost wrote:

He was shortly thereafter removed as a moderator.

November 4th, 2015. /u/Theymos attempts to explain his censorship policies, writing:

This once again raises the question: how is something supposed to gain community consensus if it is not allowed to be discussed? Theymos also has a strong tendency to play word games. It is very unclear and never explicitly defined what the difference of promoting as an idea and promoting the usage of is. The main factor seems to be whether it is discussed favorably (not permitted) or unfavorably (permitted).

November 5th, 2015. In a post that was downvoted to -749 points (archive), /u/theymos threatens to ban prominent Bitcoin company Coinbase and its CEO Brian Armstrong from /r/bitcoin for supporting block size increase proposal BIP101. Theymos also threatened to remove Coinbase from bitcoin.org (which he controls).

In the same thread, /u/StarMaged chimes in and admits how the post being discussed had been deleted by /r/bitcoin mods several times prior to being allowed. StarMaged also says of users commenting on the censorship and the ensuing confusion that

Yes, ideas are dangerous.

December 26th, 2015. /u/nathan2055 tested /r/bitcoin moderation policies by posting a totally innocuous discussion thread (archive) asking What is you guys [sic] opinion on BitcoinXT and BIP101? Of course, the post was immediately removed from /r/bitcoin. Moderator /u/StarMaged had to venture into /r/Bitcoin_Uncensored to provide his rationale for deleting the post:

/u/Nathan2055 also posted a screenshot of a private message exchange he had with /r/bitcoin moderator /u/110101002, in which the moderator explains that discussion of Coinbase is now completely forbidden in /r/bitcoin for being off-topic, simply because they run a different backend that is not Bitcoin Core.

In the same thread, StarMaged goes on to explain:

December 27th, 2015. Theymos made good on his earlier threats (archive) to remove Coinbase from bitcoin.org, along with any other company that dared to voice an opinion in favor of bigger blocks (as seen in this Github commit).

The post calling this behavior out had 419 points (87% upvoted), and the normally polite Erik Voorhees went so far as to say:

December 28th, 2015. A rogue /r/bitcoin mod going by the username /u/CensorshipIsTheWorst leaked the following conversation from the /r/Bitcoin mod-mail:

A few hours later, /u/colsatre had his moderator position revoked, leading some to speculate that he was the rogue mod. /u/CensorshipIsTheWorst never posted again.

January 9th, 2016. A Github pull request to revert the removal of Coinbase and others is ignored, despite overwhelming consensus from Github users that the pull request should be merged (only three users NACKed the request). The post discussing this matter (archive)had 926 upvotes (89% upvoted).

Of course the top comment, with a score of -53, from rabid censorship supporter and JoinMarket developer /u/belcher_ insists that the vote is invalid because the pull request was brigaded. Youll notice a similar refrain from the mods of /r/Bitcoin whenever they delete a post that disagrees with their status quo: The post was upvoted, ergo it was brigaded, ergo we had to remove it.

It is interesting to note that a post with a score of negative 53 points would appear at the top of the comments thread. In addition to hiding the scores of new posts for 8-12 hours to obscure voting activity, the moderators of /r/bitcoin will set the default comment sorting behavior in threads they disagree with to controversial, so that the most heavily downvoted comments appear at the top of the thread, deceiving users unfamiliar with the practice into thinking that the most unpopular opinions are in fact the most popular.

March 8th, 2016. Long-time bitcoin user and inventor of the mining pool /u/slush0 remarks that the /r/bitcoin moderators censored a video he made explaining how users of his mining pool can vote on which software to run.

Although a self-described crypto-anarchist, Slush seems to have developed quite the case of Stockholm syndrome. Today he can be found actively participating in discussions on /r/Bitcoin and calling for the destruction of bitcoins security model.

The same day, /u/BeYourOwnBank points out that /r/bitcoin moderators have been deleting posts of Satoshi Nakamoto quotes. (Example 1, Example 2)

March 9th, 2016. /u/alwayswatchyoursix posts an accusation that mods of /r/bitcoin are actively searching /r/btc for users to ban. Former /r/bitcoin moderator /u/MineForeman chimes in to confirm that this is exactly what he has been doing, and admits that it is an automated process.

/u/MineForeman goes on to explain the methodology that his banning bot uses.

March 27th, 2016. /u/blockologist makes two posts to /r/bitcoin. One is titled PollClassic or Core, (Classic was another attempt at a block size increase, after BitcoinXT was killed through a prolific DDoS attack) and the other is a blog post from Gavin Andresen titled Collaboration requires communication. Both were deleted. A moderator of /r/bitcoin provided this rationale:

May 18th, 2016. /u/Annapurna317 receives a 15-day ban from /r/bitcoin for posting the following comment:

July 24th, 2016. Three-year old reddit account and longtime /r/bitcoin poster /u/chinawat demonstrates that his responses to a 1-day old account on /r/bitcoin are being selectively hidden.

August 29th, 2016. One can use a tool called ceddit to see which comments in a thread have been deleted. Here is one example from this day:

October 23rd, 2016. /u/andromedavirus provides proof that one of his comments was censored from /r/bitcoin. What had originally been censored was news of a Bitcoin miner conference held in China, which saw over 300 attendees who were overwhelmingly in favor of a blocksize increase. News of the conference was censored from /r/bitcoin, until a day later a dismissive and inaccurate tweet from prolific troll Samson Mow was permitted to remain:

The next day, /u/andromedavirus was banned from /r/bitcoin (archive) for being a lying troll.

October 31st, 2016. /u/BeijingBitcoins posted (archive) my own article, There Will Be No Bitcoin Split, to /r/bitcoin. It briefly attained the top post position in the subreddit before one of the mods locked the comments.

After realizing what happened while attempting to respond to a comment, /u/BeijingBitcoins then created a post on the uncensored /r/btc about how the comments had been locked. That post quickly gained attention, and within one hour of the /r/btc post drawing attention to the censorship, the original thread at /r/bitcoin had been removed altogether.

The next day, /r/bitcoin moderator /u/Frankenmint made a post in /r/btc to announce that he was the one who had locked the comments and then deleted the post. He explained that he had to lock the comments to prevent it from devolving (into what, exactly?). I had a brief exchange with him, in which I asked:

His response right here sums up the entire position of the /r/bitcoin moderation team. While Bitcoin was originally invented as a crypto-anarchist plaything, and gained early attention from hardcore libertarians, it has now become overrun with paternalistic autocrats such as /u/theymos, /u/BashCo, and /u/frankenmint. These gentlemen rule with an iron fist, deleting posts that they deem to be dangerous to the community, and believing that both the online social community and Bitcoin itself are incapable of self-regulation. Instead they believe that only through the paternalistic wisdom of their own minds will Bitcoin ever amount to anything.

While today the exasperated members of the Bitcoin community accept the heavy-handed censorship as a fact of life, it was not always like this. The examples collected here are but few, and were collected over the course of two hours of research. While today the censorship is accepted as the norm, you can see in some of the examples above that it was once an incredibly contentious issue among the community.

Sadly, many members of the Bitcoin community, including those who have at times described themselves as cypherpunks, libertarians, and crypto-anarchists, have all become complacent with the status quo. Not only do they not attempt to fight against this tyranny, but they casually accept it, defend it, and continue participating in heavily censored forums where the voices of a significant number of their entire community are prevented from ever being heard. What is happening is gas-lighting of the highest order.

John Blocke implores these people to take action: Denounce censorship, and do not participate in censored forums. The Reddit admins have shown time and again that they do not care to disrupt the disruption of a $10 billion open source software movement, so we must take matters into our own hands. Do not let Bitcoin perish at the hands of a petty tyrant like Theymos.

Addendum: this article was disappeared from /r/bitcoin within minutes of it being posted there by /u/BitcoinGuerrilla.

Read this article:
A (brief and incomplete) history of censorship in /r/Bitcoin

Back in October of 2017, I wrote this article: Internet Censorship is Now Rampant It is High Time to Bookmark Your Alternatives. That was back in what I now refer to as Phase One of the Internet censorship war. I didnt know it then, but that was back when the censorship campaign was still fairly mild and relatively subtle. Then, in early August of 2018, Alex Jones was systematically banned by more than 10 social media services and sites. Eventually, even Twitter jumped on the Ban Alex Band Wagon. When the Alex Jones mass banning was reported in the mainstream press, they made it sound like it was an independent decision made by Apple, and that the various social media then merely followed suit. But I suspect there was a meeting of many of those corporate leaders that took place in advance. (That meeting was probably in cyberspace, but it might have looked a lot like this one.)

In my estimation, the blacklisting of Alex Jones was just a just trial balloon. Once they saw that Jones was banned without too much of a fuss, it was the turning point. Thus began Phase Two: Overt Censorship. As Phase Two got underway, at least 10 other outspoken conservatives were similarly given strikes, or blacklisted, or outright banned. They included: Kris Paronto, Laura Loomer, Jesse Kelly, Candace Owens, actor James Woods, Gavin McInnes, Libertarian comedian Owen Benjamin, and street artist Sabo. Even left-wing feminist Meghan Murphy was banned, ostensibly for the quasi-conservative crime of misgendering. Meanwhile, in the United Kingdom, the same has been done to Paul Joseph Watson, Carl Benjamin (aka Sargon of Akkad), Milo Yiannopoulos, Tommy Robinson (aka Stephen Christopher Yaxley-Lennon), and several others. These censorship campaigns became so overt that a partial list of Twitter bans was documented at the ultra-leftist Wikipedia. Despite repeated attempts, the cabals couldnt make that wiki page go away.

Most recently, we read: Facebook Now Automatically Blocks ZeroHedge.com articles. But then, just two days later:Facebook Reverses Zero Hedge Ban, Says It Made A Mistake. Hmmm A mistake? I think that Facebook just got called out for censoring a little too hard, and a little too fast. Also in March of 2019, the left is again attempting to blacklist Tucker Carlson. (This smear campaign began in late 2018.) And following the recent massacre at a mosque in Christchurch, New Zealand. The Dissenter web page commenting plug-in has been banned in New Zealand. And just in the past few days: Twitter Bans User For Laughing At Rachel Maddows Tears Of Despair Over Mueller Report.

Ill venture to make a prediction: As we get closer to November of 2020, the Internets censorious overlords will become less apologetic. Feeling secure in their near-monopolistic ivory towers, they will redouble their campaign to silence dissenters. They will attempt to blacklist not just fringe journalists, but move up the chain to attack more mainstream reporters who hold conservative views. Tucker Carlson was just one of their first targets.

It has also been reported that Internet payments giant PayPal has become an overt censor. Take a few minutes to read this:PayPals corporate censorship. Also in the past year, JPMorgan Chasebank began closing accounts of gun makers and sellers, as well as a few outspoken conservatives. A similar anti-gun strategy is reportedly in operation at CitiBank. And at least a half dozen banks have cut any ties to the National Rife Association (NRA). And even the nominally neutral Patreon has taken sides and cancelled the account of Sargon of Akkad for something he said at a third party site.

And of course weve already documented the insidious censorship that now infests YouTube.

Outright censorship of the Internetparticularly in the social media sphere, in Wikipedia, and on YouTubehas become the new normal. That is an irrefutable fact. I believe that this is all part of a calculated, coordinated, and comprehensive plan by tech moguls, in coordination with mass media executives. The tech platforms are using Artificial Intelligence and carefully crafted algorithms for censorship. It is now clear that their intent is to systematically discredit, de-monetize, de-rank, disrupt, de-platform, demonize, and delete content from anyone with views that dont match their own.

Who are their targets? Here is just a sampling:

I fully expect the Internet censorship campaign to go into high gear in the run-up to the 2020 U.S. Presidential election. That will likely be the beginning of Phase Three, or what should be called: By Whatever Means Necessary Censorship. I predict that in this phase, the leftist cabals will use every conceivable arrow in their quivers, to include (but not limited to):

All in all, these tactics will make life a living hell for their political opponents.

And what if the Democrats eventually gain control of the White House and both the U.S. House and Senate? At that point we may witness Phase Four, or Scorched Earth Censorship. Thankfully, we are not there, yet. But I can foresee that this could include:

Beware, folks! Mainstream social media is now doing their best to twist reality. So please seek alternatives like FreeZoxeeFriends, Dissenter, and Full30.com.

Do not expect support for righteous people to come from the Republican Party. It has been co-opted by the RINOs. And there are now just a handful of conservatives left in the Democrat Party. Pray for good government.

I can foresee that bloggers video bloggers (vloggers) will be at particular risk. We are small, vulnerable targets. I say vulnerable because we dont have deep pockets. Nor do we have attorneys on annual retainers, like the big media. Even independent blog siteswith independent domain names, some proprietary posting tools, and dedicated offshore serversare at risk of censorship. My fellow bloggers have already suffered numerous DDOS attacks, manipulated Google ranking algorithms, and shadow banning. It is safe to assume that as the censorship war continues to escalate, a cut-off of funding via PayPal and/or Amazon Associates account may be next. Pray hard.

Oh, and get a VPN service. JWR

Note: Permission to re-post this article is granted, but only if it is re-posted in full, with all links intact.

See the original post here:
Phase Three of the Internet Censorship War, James Rawles ...

Googles new gaming platform comes with a big hitch more censorship.

Google has announced the launch of Stadia, a new streaming service that will allow people to pay to play a wide selection of games online. The goal is to have it become the gaming equivalent of Netflix.

Only Google wants Stadia to become a gaming safe space. As CNETobserved Google wants to prevent its new Stadia from filling up with racists, bigots and trolls who congregate online.

Tech platforms have been heavily criticized by the left for not doing more to restrict speech they find offensive online, while conservatives have been hammering them for cracking down on freedom of speech and debate.

CNETspoke with Phil Harrison, the Google employee who currently runs Stadia about his commitment to keeping abusive activity off the service. He acknowledged that he offered few specifications on how this would be carried out.

Harrison admitted that he wishes "we could make some grand proclamation that it's going to go away," then acknowledged that "I don't think that is true." Then came the talk of censorship where he stated that he thinks Stadia can marginalize speech it finds offensive to a large degree. He acknowledge that many gamers are not politically correct liberals and enjoy that type of communication.

He specifically professed that the anti-PC crowd is not what we want to associate with as a platform. adding that we will do everything we can to find it and insulated from the rest of what our platform is. There's clearly some things that we can lean on from the rest of Google that will help us.

Google has a checkered history when it comes to censorship and bias. It worked with the far-left Anti-Defamation League. The ADLs CEO Jonathan Greenblatt claims he worked with Google and Google AI to try to interrupt cyber hate before it happens. His definition of hate includes words such as caravan and open borders, which he labels as white supremacist phrases. Googles own employees share a similarly absurd standard of hatred, with more than 100 of its employees enraged at the usage of the word family in a memo, which they saw as deeply homophobic.

When Google CEO Sundar Pichai testified before Congress, he was grilled by GOP representatives over his companys biases. Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) in particular roasted Pichai over an election scandal exposed by a leaked memo. Eliana Murillo, Googles head of multicultural marketing, claimed to have worked with organizations to mobilize Latino votes in key states as well as paid for rides to the polls. On the other hand Google remains fine with a Saudi app that allowed men to track their wives and prevent them from fleeing the country.

See the original post:
Google Proposes Censorship for New Gaming Platform Before ...

I have certain rules I live by. My first rule: I dont believe anything the government tells me. Nothing. Zero.

George Carlin

Let me tell you, you take on the intelligence community and they have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer in a 2017interview on MSNBC

As someone whose website was slanderedby the earliest manifestations of the hysterical Russiagate mob, I could go on and on now thats the whole spectacles been disproven, but Im not going to do that. Rather, I want to highlight how despite the whole thing blowing up, well be living with severe direct consequences for years to come.

First, its important to point out that none of Russiagates most irresponsible grifters will face any serious repercussions for wasting the countrys time, money and energy on a fake story for the past two years. Russiagate was as much a business model as it was a conspiracy theory, and some of its most shameless peddlers made out like bandits over the past couple of years.

As Glenn Greenwald noted:

Lets not forget Luke Harding, a guy who literally wrote a book titled Collusion, which naturally soared to the top of the New York Times bestseller list.

Of course, nothing seriously damaging will happen to Rachel, Luke or the other myriad Russiagate charlatans who drove and profited handsomely from what was by far the biggest conspiracy theory of the past two years. Will they be banned from Facebook, Twitter or YouTube? Of course not, despite the fact that they played a larger role than anybody else with respect to driving our national conversation into a cesspool of insanity, xenophobia and falsehoods.

Nevertheless, you can be sure Tim Cook, Sundar Pichai and Mark Zuckerberg will never come out and condemn them for peddling endless amounts fake news. No tech giant scarlet letter will be forthcoming for the priests and priestesses of Russiagate; but why not?

The simple answer is that all the public concern about fake news was just a ruse the tech giants were just pretending to care about it. The real objective was to appease angry politicians by finding an excuse to erase and de-rank opinions that dont conform to the dispositions and leanings that dominate the executive suites of the largest tech companies and the power players in establishment Washington D.C.

Incredibly enough, the entire push that convinced much of the public of a pressing need to encourage tech giants to aggressively censor and ban certain opinions was driven by Russiagate in the first place. In other words, hysteria and fear that Russian propaganda would infect the minds of the American public was a primary driver in getting much of our culture to accept flippant de-platforming from tech giants across the platforms that have come to dominate online conversation in this country. Russiagate is now over, but tech giant censorship remains. Weve been scammed in far more serious and long-lasting ways than meets the eye.

Now would be a good time to revisit a few excerpts from last years piece,These Are the Times Bitcoin Was Made For:

Donald Trumps election and Bernie Sanders unexpectedly strong run in a rigged Democratic primary really shook the neoliberal/neocon establishment to its core. The status quo response has been as pathetic as its been extraordinary, with the hysteria so completely off the wall I sometimes wonder if the whole Russia-Trump collusion narrative was invented and propagated for the sole purpose of promoting a cultural acceptance of censorship.

There are two crucial attack vectors being targeted when it comes to punishing the transgressions of American thought criminals; money and communications, and we need to understand that Alex Jones is our cultural guinea pig. The tech giants started by kneecapping his voice by simultaneously de-platforming his presence from many of todays dominant communications platforms. Now PayPals moved in to make payments more difficult, thus threatening his ability to earn money. You dont have to like anything Alex Jones does to see how dangerous this is. Whats being done to him can and will be to done to others deemed undesirable by Silicon Valley oligarchs should they get popular enough. Whats emerging is a playbook on how to exert pressure and encourage self-censorship in the digital age and you better pay attention.

Lets take another step back to take stock of where were at. Sure a bunch of scam-artist pundits and fake journalists were momentarily embarrassed, but these people have no shame and many of them already achieved fame and fortune. Moreover, just like the banker crooks of the financial crisis era and the Iraq war WMD peddlers that came before them, these people are more likely to be promoted than face any life-altering consequences for the society damaging lies they spread. In fact, our system is so completely rigged in favor of certain kinds of opinions, not even the most bald faced liars amongst them will even see their social media accounts shuttered.

So yes, Russiagate has blown up spectacularly, but were still left with selective tech giant censorship which focuses on a certain type of conspiracy theory or fake news. What Facebook, Apple, Google and others have made clear at this point is that fake news is fine as long as its repeating lies of the government or intelligence agencies. Theres no amount of war-creating government inspired fake news someone can spread that will ever get you banned by the tech giants, but if you dare to have a discussion about vaccines, 9/11 or flat-earth, youll never be heard from again.

Russiagate ending doesnt alter this entrenched and very dangerous double standard. Were once again left with a monumental falsehood exposed, yet the damage has already been done to public discourse and the ability to freely communicate on Americas dominant tech platforms. As such, well continue to be led apathetically in a very restrictive and unfree direction unless we wake up and make some serious changes.

Yes, a ridiculous, false and deranged conspiracy theory has been disproven, but the damage has already been done and the damage is severe.

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See original here:
Russiagate Might Be Dead, but Big Tech Censorship Is Here ...

The study of censorship blossomed in the mid-1960s, amidst broader cultural and political changes. In the United States, this occurred at the same time that the long-running, self-regulatory Production Code was winding down to be replaced by a Ratings Code in 1968 that is still in use. Carmen 1966 surveys legal decisions up to that point in the United States, Randall 1968 looks closely at the functioning of city and state boards in the United States, while Hunnings 1967 offers a more comparative study (one of the few in studies on censorship, and this is something of a lacuna in current scholarship). The study of legal decisions in the United States is pursued in more recent scholarship: Jowett 1990 offers an excellent overview, DeGrazia and Newman 1982 gives details of a number of court cases (the former was a lawyer actively involved in censorship cases), and Wittern-Keller 2008 helpfully examines the long history of the legal record, using the files of state censors. The broader contexts for battles over the cinema and the functioning of self-regulatory bodies are addressed in two excellent collections of essays: Bernstein 1999 focuses on Hollywood before the 1968 Ratings Code went into effect, and Couvares 2006, an essential collection, covers a longer history, beginning with the emergence of cinema and culminating with the so-called culture wars of the 1980s.

Bernstein, Matthew, ed. Controlling Hollywood: Censorship and Regulation in the Studio Era. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1999.

E-mail Citation

Very useful collection that carefully gathers together a number of previously published essays, combining them with two newly commissioned pieces, to examine movie censorship in the United States from the Supreme Courts important 1915 decision on the legitimacy of state censorship to the emergence of the Ratings Code in 1968.

Carmen, Ira H.. Movies, Censorship and the Law. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1966.

E-mail Citation

Account of significant court cases in the United States and the impact of these on the existence and functioning of various city and state censor boards operative in the 1960s.

Couvares, Francis G., ed. Movie Censorship and American Culture. 2d ed. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2006.

E-mail Citation

Couvares insightfully situates movie censorship as a central node within broader culture warsbattles about defining cultural value and deciding what is legitimate to see and hearthat are connected to questions of hegemony and power. Essays examine examples from the United States across the 20th century and are the best point of entry for undergraduate and graduate students.

DeGrazia, Edward, and Roger K. Newman. Banned Films: Movies, Censors, and the First Amendment. New York: R. R. Bowker, 1982.

E-mail Citation

Overview of movie censorship that also includes a useful detailed account of 122 court cases involving the censorship of films in the United States from 1908 to 1981.

Hunnings, Neville March. Film Censors and the Law. London: Allen and Unwin, 1967.

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The material here on the emergence and functioning of censorship in Britain is useful, but the book is most valuable for the chapters on the history and (then) contemporary functioning of censorship in other countries, including the United States, India, Canada, Australia, Denmark, France, and Soviet Russia.

Jowett, Garth. Moral Responsibility and Commercial Entertainment: Social Control in the United States Film Industry, 19071968. Historical Journal of Film, Radio, and Television 10.1 (1990): 331.

DOI: 10.1080/01439689000260011E-mail Citation

Good overview of the censorship situation in the United States until the late 1960s by a significant media historian.

Randall, Richard. The Censorship of the Movies: The Social and Political Control of a Mass Medium. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1968.

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Randalls book delineates the legal contexts and the procedures of state and city prior restraint censorship, as well as more informal mechanisms, as they operated in the 1960s. Written amidst the broad social, cultural, and political changes of the 1960s, the book was published the same year the Ratings Code went into effect.

Wittern-Keller, Laura. Freedom of the Screen: Legal Challenges to State Film Censorship, 19151981. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2008.

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Wittern-Keller outlines the judicial attitudes toward film censorship and the responses by individuals and the film industry as they sought to challenge legal restrictions.

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Censorship - Cinema and Media Studies - Oxford ...