Recently, half a dozen social media megacorporations banned Alex Jones from their platforms within the same day, with a few more following them after a few days. This wasn't in response to anything particular that he did. It couldn't be more obvious that there was collusion between these corporations. It would be an astronomically low probability that all of them decided to ban him precisely on the same day, independently of each other. It's quite obvious that these independent corporations agreed with each other to ban him. None of the corporations cited anything illegal that he had done as a justification for the bans.
Likewise some time ago the director of the Jihad Watch website Robert Spencer (not to be confused with the more famous Richard Spencer, no relation) was banned from Patreon on behest of the credit card company Mastercard, which has also directly denied their services from him, along with other financial corporations. There were no reasons given, and Robert Spencer has never done anything illegal.
Very recently Gab, which is a Twitter-like social media website, but which has an explicitly and openly pro free speech stance and policy, has likewise been under heavy attack. At least two internet service providers have ended their contracts with the website, as well as at least two financial corporations. At the moment of writing this, the Gab website is down because of these attacks. Once again, nothing that Gab had been doing was illegal, or different than other media websites like Twitter or Facebook are doing. The only difference is that Gab has an explicit policy of not censoring legal expressions of free speech.
All of this has been happening just withing a couple of months. And they are only the most prominent cases. The tip of the iceberg. And they all have one thing in common: Being attacked, censored, banned and denied service because of political opinions (which are in no way illegal).
Now, consider how many people are behind all this, in total. How many people are deciding on your behalf what kinds of things you should be able to see on the internet, what kinds of opinions you should be seeing.
There are two major players behind this: A relatively small group of leftist internet activists scouring the internet for any political opinions they don't like and constantly pestering social media corporations, internet service providers, financial corporations and the like to have them banned, as well as a few individual people at the head of those corporations reading these complaints and making decisions based on them.
It's of course impossible to give any hard numbers, but I think it isn't completely unrealistic to say that, perhaps, at most 10 to 20 people are responsible for these decisions in each one of these corporations. Let's say there are about a hundred such corporations that are running the vast majority of the major internet and monetary services out there, and let's be generous and say that about 20 people in each are the ones who ultimately decide on these things. That would be about 2000 people in total. (And I think that's quite generous, both in the number of corporations as well as the number of people in each making these decisions. The actual numbers are probably a fraction, but let's go with this number.)
It's also impossible to know the number of internet activists who are scouring the internet and constantly complaining to these corporations to have them act on somebody the activists don't like, but it's a relatively small number. (I'm here talking about the people who actively rouse others to report things to corporations, who wouldn't otherwise be doing it if not for these "lead" activists.) The total number of these people is probably also in the few thousands.
All in all, I would say that even with very generous estimates the number of people directly causing all these bans is less than 10 thousand in total.
Now, consider how many people are using the internet. According to official statistics, Facebook alone has currently over 2 billion monthly active users. (Not just registered users, but active users.) Twitter has more than 330 million monthly active users (67 million of them from the United States alone).
Overall, there are literally billions of active internet users in the world (which is quite a sizeable chunk of the total world population).
Less than 10 thousand of them, ie. less than 0.001% of all internet users, are making political censorship decisions, or directly causing such decisions to be made, on behalf of all users. Without being elected or asked.
This is a microscopic unelected oligarchy of people deciding on your behalf what you should or shouldn't be seeing on the internet, without asking you, and often without you even knowing that something has been censored. Nobody elected them or gave them this authority. They are simply doing it because they can. They aren't asking you.
Likewise some time ago the director of the Jihad Watch website Robert Spencer (not to be confused with the more famous Richard Spencer, no relation) was banned from Patreon on behest of the credit card company Mastercard, which has also directly denied their services from him, along with other financial corporations. There were no reasons given, and Robert Spencer has never done anything illegal.
Very recently Gab, which is a Twitter-like social media website, but which has an explicitly and openly pro free speech stance and policy, has likewise been under heavy attack. At least two internet service providers have ended their contracts with the website, as well as at least two financial corporations. At the moment of writing this, the Gab website is down because of these attacks. Once again, nothing that Gab had been doing was illegal, or different than other media websites like Twitter or Facebook are doing. The only difference is that Gab has an explicit policy of not censoring legal expressions of free speech.
All of this has been happening just withing a couple of months. And they are only the most prominent cases. The tip of the iceberg. And they all have one thing in common: Being attacked, censored, banned and denied service because of political opinions (which are in no way illegal).
Now, consider how many people are behind all this, in total. How many people are deciding on your behalf what kinds of things you should be able to see on the internet, what kinds of opinions you should be seeing.
There are two major players behind this: A relatively small group of leftist internet activists scouring the internet for any political opinions they don't like and constantly pestering social media corporations, internet service providers, financial corporations and the like to have them banned, as well as a few individual people at the head of those corporations reading these complaints and making decisions based on them.
It's of course impossible to give any hard numbers, but I think it isn't completely unrealistic to say that, perhaps, at most 10 to 20 people are responsible for these decisions in each one of these corporations. Let's say there are about a hundred such corporations that are running the vast majority of the major internet and monetary services out there, and let's be generous and say that about 20 people in each are the ones who ultimately decide on these things. That would be about 2000 people in total. (And I think that's quite generous, both in the number of corporations as well as the number of people in each making these decisions. The actual numbers are probably a fraction, but let's go with this number.)
It's also impossible to know the number of internet activists who are scouring the internet and constantly complaining to these corporations to have them act on somebody the activists don't like, but it's a relatively small number. (I'm here talking about the people who actively rouse others to report things to corporations, who wouldn't otherwise be doing it if not for these "lead" activists.) The total number of these people is probably also in the few thousands.
All in all, I would say that even with very generous estimates the number of people directly causing all these bans is less than 10 thousand in total.
Now, consider how many people are using the internet. According to official statistics, Facebook alone has currently over 2 billion monthly active users. (Not just registered users, but active users.) Twitter has more than 330 million monthly active users (67 million of them from the United States alone).
Overall, there are literally billions of active internet users in the world (which is quite a sizeable chunk of the total world population).
Less than 10 thousand of them, ie. less than 0.001% of all internet users, are making political censorship decisions, or directly causing such decisions to be made, on behalf of all users. Without being elected or asked.
This is a microscopic unelected oligarchy of people deciding on your behalf what you should or shouldn't be seeing on the internet, without asking you, and often without you even knowing that something has been censored. Nobody elected them or gave them this authority. They are simply doing it because they can. They aren't asking you.
Comments
Post a Comment