a look at public-private informational control
is the sunshine about to finally get in?
i am a free speech and free association absolutist. i think the government has no place limiting or mandating either. on the other hand, private entities, no matter how large or important, are different. they may do as they like and no one has any right to demand that they be allowed to use a private service or that it must amplify or even allow their voice. just as i may ask you to leave my house if you say things i find sufficiently objectionable, so too may they curate their content.
the rules about “section 230” are just legalism and to my mind, like so many other government policies, not terribly well conceived. just because i will not allow dog-supremacists to comment on threads because the clear truth is that #TheFutureIsFeline does not and should not make me responsible for all other comments. pretty much nothing else in life works this way around user generated content.
what we allow ought be up to us.
BUT, and this is a big “but” this agency of private entities to publish as they please really only works under full, free, and fair markets.
if a doctor has the right to “speak freely,” but government agencies and boards will take his or her license should the physician caution against covid jabs or puberty blockers, then this is just first amendment violation by proxy. this is not “free to speak and free to accept the consequences.” this is government sponsored speech suppression by convolution.
and that is a horse of an entirely different color.
such proxy enabled violation can get very nasty and provides both the backbone and the telltale hallmarks of fascist systems. it’s the government picking favorites and demanding that business do its dirty work for it either by menace, preferencing, or some other form of pay for play or crony corporatist collusion. and this lands us in the realms of threats, extortion, and bribery.
when then government stands around outside your office flipping a nickel and says “nice search engine you got there. be a shame if someone came along and used anti-trust on it” or demands fealty in exchange for preferential treatment or safety from scrutiny, we’re getting into mobster behavior or worse, into the sort of public-private corporatist collusion that keeps donations flowing, ensures services are rendered, and keeps competition at bay.
“oh, did something anti-competitive happen to PARLER, i didn’t notice...?”
such seating of government and big business together in the same car will inevitably result in the vehicle in question being driven right over we the people. it’s the road to oligopoly and oppression and if it’s going on, we the people have a strong vested interest in knowing about it.
and that’s what makes this so interesting:
the state AG’s are finally breaking through.
just where did all this “misinformation ministry” and scary poppins struggle session fact checking come from?
how did it permeate so much social media so suddenly and with such striking uniformity?
how were they suddenly all suppressing and censoring the same things and singing from the same hymnals of “approved information”?
this has smelled rotten from the start.
the selective suppression of facts, narratives, and speakers has been beyond blatant and the permissiveness of utter lies and propagandistic pseudoscientific pabulum from “official sources” has been surreal.
post sound data that masks don’t work and you get the axe yet the CDC has been caught 4 or 5 times that i know of pushing outright provable fraud to encourage adoption of a nonsense NPI and they still get pole position to do it again with a winged monkey army of faux fact checkkery behind them.
this looks like more than a coincidence.
this looks like policy.
and we the people are owed answers.
you can get more details here:
the very fact that this has been so assiduously hidden and attempts at transparency so stridently resisted speaks volumes in and of itself.
democracy may die in darkness, but it’s clear that the technocratic regulatory state thrives in it.
enough is enough, it’s time for the truth to come out.
and gatopals™ jay and not so silent martin are, as ever, lining up on the side of truth.
and won’t that be fun.
humor aside, this is a key issue of our time.
if the vast power of DC has wriggled tentacles into media, internet, and social media to suppress, shape, and limit information to “approved governmental narrative” it represents an outright assault on we the people.
it’s an attack, pure and simple.
it’s an attack on your liberty and on your safety.
it’s a defenestration of democracy and a repudiation of our republic.
and it cannot be countenanced.
so let’s find out.
it’s long past time to get some sunshine in here.
Imagine the government hiring a private security force (made of ex-cops) to break into your house and search it (and report back!) without a warrant, then claiming there was no Fourth Amendment violation because it wasn't government that searched your house.
The first amendment works the same way.
“If the vast power of DC has wriggled tentacles...”. IF? There is no ‘if’.