For the longest times the idea that freedom of speech is ending in the west sounded like just paranoia and a conspiracy theory. However, it has become clearer and clearer in just the past couple years that it's a real threat.
Country after country, especially in Europe, is criminalizing "hate speech". The problem is that "hate speech" is such a vague umbrella term that almost anything can be categorizing under it. In reality it's just a convenient excuse, and it means anything that could be considered even remotely "right-wing" and "conservative". This includes things like criticism of unrestricted immigration policies, criticism of the crimes committed by immigrants, criticism of Islam (both the religion and the sociopolitical ideology and culture), criticism of feminism, the social justice cult and identity politics, and so on and so forth.
In some western European countries, such as Germany and the UK, it has already gone so far that the police is literally raiding homes of people who have posted the wrong opinions on social media. This includes at least one instance of some people posting on a private group in Facebook (ie. a group that's only visible to its members and nobody else.) In the UK it has gone so far that even criticizing the police themselves may result in investigations and arrests. I wish I were making this up.
The EU is pressuring social media corporations to limit freedom of speech, in the name of eradicating "hate speech".
The scary thing is that it's working. And the even scarier thing is that, as said, "hate speech" is anything that's critical of the regressive leftist ideology. Facebook, Twitter, Reddit... and now even YouTube, is banning, censoring and shadow-banning people who simply criticize the leftist ideology. Many of these banned people have never even broken any terms of service, or said anything illegal; the only thing they have done is to criticize the regressive left, and have a relatively large audience.
Sometimes this has gone to absolutely egregious levels. For example, whenever Donald Trump posts a tweet, any supportive responses just disappear within minutes, while anti-Trump responses get to stay. This has been tested time and again. The only possible explanation for this is that somebody at Twitter is actually constantly monitoring Trump's twitter feed, and manually removing any supportive comments. That's right; it appears that Twitter has somebody hired to manually monitor and remove supportive comments, just to make Trump look bad.
Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, and now even Google, is at increasing levels just banning people with the "wrong" opinions. In the past I thought that Google was supportive of free speech, but it seems that this has changed. For example, recently they just completely removed the YouTube channel of Jordan Peterson, and even his gmail account, with no explanation whatsoever given. The only reason they were restored was because he is so famous and his supporters were able to raise such a ruckus that Google couldn't ignore it. And it has become the norm that any famous critic of the regressive left will have their social media accounts suspended (and sometimes restored after a ruckus, and then some time later suspended again, in an eternal dance.) American conservative users are routinely banned or censored.
YouTube has announced plans to hide all videos for all "undesirable" people. These videos will be hidden from the public, and will not appear in any lists, and even their comment sections will be disabled. YouTube is already using blacklists to demonetize all videos of certain channels, even when those videos contain absolutely nothing objectionable and are completely unrelated to politics or anything. (This has been tested: The exact same video posted on two different channels can be demonetized in one but not the other. The only possible explanation is that the first channel is blacklisted.) It has also been demonstrated that Google is increasingly dropping search results that are critical of the regressive left, or of Islam or immigration, further and further back in their search engine. It's perfectly possible that it's only a matter of time before they hide "undesirable" pages completely.
The internet is supposed to be the bastion of free speech; the only medium that cannot be censored by governments. The problem is that 99.9% of people use one single search engine, and only a handful of social media websites. When all these corporations collude in limiting people's free speech, and do so in a surreptitious manner, that means that 99.9% of people will be affected. They will be getting limited information, because the counterpoints have been censored.
And it will probably not even stop there. I don't think it's unreasonable to suspect that in the near future government after government will start demanding that ISPs themselves censor "wrong" websites and content, so that their customers cannot get hold of it even if they had a direct URL to it. If governments pass this as law, ISPs will have no choice than to comply, or face criminal prosecution.
All this will be done in the name of removing "hate speech" and "terrorism" from the internet, yet it will be quite transparently done to remove anything that's deemed "right-wing" and critical of the regressive left, immigration, or Islam.
The European press is, of course, already full-on regressive hard-left, and has been so for decades. It has only become more radicalized as the years have passed, and will probably only become worse in the near future.
Europe will become like China in terms of internet censorship. However, unlike China, most corporations will actually willingly engage in it, rather than the government having to force them. But like in China, the police will kick your door down if you dare to post the wrong opinions on the internet. Perhaps not in every single European country, but in increasing amounts so.
Country after country, especially in Europe, is criminalizing "hate speech". The problem is that "hate speech" is such a vague umbrella term that almost anything can be categorizing under it. In reality it's just a convenient excuse, and it means anything that could be considered even remotely "right-wing" and "conservative". This includes things like criticism of unrestricted immigration policies, criticism of the crimes committed by immigrants, criticism of Islam (both the religion and the sociopolitical ideology and culture), criticism of feminism, the social justice cult and identity politics, and so on and so forth.
In some western European countries, such as Germany and the UK, it has already gone so far that the police is literally raiding homes of people who have posted the wrong opinions on social media. This includes at least one instance of some people posting on a private group in Facebook (ie. a group that's only visible to its members and nobody else.) In the UK it has gone so far that even criticizing the police themselves may result in investigations and arrests. I wish I were making this up.
The EU is pressuring social media corporations to limit freedom of speech, in the name of eradicating "hate speech".
The scary thing is that it's working. And the even scarier thing is that, as said, "hate speech" is anything that's critical of the regressive leftist ideology. Facebook, Twitter, Reddit... and now even YouTube, is banning, censoring and shadow-banning people who simply criticize the leftist ideology. Many of these banned people have never even broken any terms of service, or said anything illegal; the only thing they have done is to criticize the regressive left, and have a relatively large audience.
Sometimes this has gone to absolutely egregious levels. For example, whenever Donald Trump posts a tweet, any supportive responses just disappear within minutes, while anti-Trump responses get to stay. This has been tested time and again. The only possible explanation for this is that somebody at Twitter is actually constantly monitoring Trump's twitter feed, and manually removing any supportive comments. That's right; it appears that Twitter has somebody hired to manually monitor and remove supportive comments, just to make Trump look bad.
Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, and now even Google, is at increasing levels just banning people with the "wrong" opinions. In the past I thought that Google was supportive of free speech, but it seems that this has changed. For example, recently they just completely removed the YouTube channel of Jordan Peterson, and even his gmail account, with no explanation whatsoever given. The only reason they were restored was because he is so famous and his supporters were able to raise such a ruckus that Google couldn't ignore it. And it has become the norm that any famous critic of the regressive left will have their social media accounts suspended (and sometimes restored after a ruckus, and then some time later suspended again, in an eternal dance.) American conservative users are routinely banned or censored.
YouTube has announced plans to hide all videos for all "undesirable" people. These videos will be hidden from the public, and will not appear in any lists, and even their comment sections will be disabled. YouTube is already using blacklists to demonetize all videos of certain channels, even when those videos contain absolutely nothing objectionable and are completely unrelated to politics or anything. (This has been tested: The exact same video posted on two different channels can be demonetized in one but not the other. The only possible explanation is that the first channel is blacklisted.) It has also been demonstrated that Google is increasingly dropping search results that are critical of the regressive left, or of Islam or immigration, further and further back in their search engine. It's perfectly possible that it's only a matter of time before they hide "undesirable" pages completely.
The internet is supposed to be the bastion of free speech; the only medium that cannot be censored by governments. The problem is that 99.9% of people use one single search engine, and only a handful of social media websites. When all these corporations collude in limiting people's free speech, and do so in a surreptitious manner, that means that 99.9% of people will be affected. They will be getting limited information, because the counterpoints have been censored.
And it will probably not even stop there. I don't think it's unreasonable to suspect that in the near future government after government will start demanding that ISPs themselves censor "wrong" websites and content, so that their customers cannot get hold of it even if they had a direct URL to it. If governments pass this as law, ISPs will have no choice than to comply, or face criminal prosecution.
All this will be done in the name of removing "hate speech" and "terrorism" from the internet, yet it will be quite transparently done to remove anything that's deemed "right-wing" and critical of the regressive left, immigration, or Islam.
The European press is, of course, already full-on regressive hard-left, and has been so for decades. It has only become more radicalized as the years have passed, and will probably only become worse in the near future.
Europe will become like China in terms of internet censorship. However, unlike China, most corporations will actually willingly engage in it, rather than the government having to force them. But like in China, the police will kick your door down if you dare to post the wrong opinions on the internet. Perhaps not in every single European country, but in increasing amounts so.
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