askchapo

Lots of people saying that Oct 7, Palestine, the genocide kicked this off.

I disagree. It kicked it into over-gear but what made it palatable for liberals was the Russiagate hoax and the concept of disinformation they've been so successfully sold from 2016 onward. That there is this cartoon villain or villains like Putin and China and so on who just have these armies of bots and trolls who conjure out of thin air as if evil sorcerers the dread disinformation which creates people (again out of thin air) who want to vote for Trump or who hate the covid vaccine, or who deny modern medicine, or who reject the imperialist narrative on Ukraine. And on and on. It broke enough brains to really get things moving. These liberals are in total denial that anything is wrong in the US, it can't be that we're in an atomized society with many left behind, with corporate lies all over, with an inconsistent, hypocritical political/economic system that breeds conspiratorial thinking or that we're founded on white supremacy and structural racism, it must be those dastardly outsiders and their false narratives and propaganda that have created all this trouble and if we get rid of them we can go back to brunch and the problems will be normal problems again like they were before.

And this is not new. I think James Baldwin was the one who said "when the south has trouble with their [black people] they blame the north, when the nation has trouble with them, they blame Russia" it's just that back then the information control was simply controlling the TV news and newspapers and there was nothing they could practically do about word of mouth campaigns, about discussions between people happening on college campuses and in various public places. But now with most discourse online and centralized behind gatekeepers the opportunity presents itself to actually institute some control.

So they were already moving this direction with the Russiagate hoax narrative and the anger and accusations towards social media for not censoring enough, it's just that Oct 7th and the loss of control of the Palestine narrative has not only panicked them but it's gotten the GOP zionists who were of course skeptical if not outright derisive of this campaign when it was just an anti-Trump thing onboard now with the need for control and a crackdown. The loss of control of the narrative on Ukraine in the global south has also significantly propelled this as we see as these arch imperialists are very frustrated with RT as Russia hasn't collapsed or been as isolated as they'd like and the war is going south in Ukraine so now it's time for blame and power-grabs.

You better start believing in Information War, you're in one

Yes, the dunk tank removals are out of hand

I think it's a trend and those in power aren't even trying that hard to explain it in any meaningful way. Before Trump the TikTok ban would have been unthinkable. But after Trump's 2016 win - libs got Russia brain. It reminds me of the zany and awful movie "The Russians Are Coming (1966)". In the movie it's a Russian sub that ran aground and some Russian sailors on American soil. In reality in 2024 - libs are primed to think anything labeled "disinformation" is Russia trying to destroy America by spending a few $100,000 on Facebook.

And it's a bipartisan effort in DC where pols want to control the narrative like they always do but when young people can watch a continuing genocide on TikTok and it puts a crimp in their plans.

I mean, they're dropping all subtlety with it at this point, so you may be onto it.

They have definitely been taking an increasing active role over the past decade. Russiagate sold the idea of combating "disinformation" to preserve liberal democracy to the public. In the meantime, all of the major platforms have been roped in. They collaborated in disrupting the george floyd uprising. They all removed links the the Blue Leaks. They all removed link to the Hunter Biden laptop story (who fucking cares, but they did it). There was a big purge at the start of the Ukraine-Russia war, and with the situation in Palestine you can't even use the word "Zionist" on Facebook anymore.

alienation and centralization of all communication between people are converging to make censorship more effective then ever.

you just have to change what people see. there's so little face to face communication now you could place individuals into sealed information bubbles now

palestine is what has truly kicked this of

but all you need are bans on certain news, keyword bans, bans on discussion. our face to face communication is so limited now.

FOSS may help this but i dunno

A new stage where it's just getting more obviously hypocritical - Russiagate set the stage for the Chinese software panic that's really highlighting it. Before it was just the CIA ruining someone's life or killing them for investigating elite crimes or resisting, and having backdoors for the data collection in telecom/big tech.

I've always figured Telegram was some weird NATO thing, so I figured that arrest isn't really that special. It was either knowingly or unwittingly a honeypot for a decade, by not really protecting anything while operating with relative impunity from places like Dubai, the Caribbean, and France....

In theory it's "resistable" if a lot of people were ready to replace their technology platforms with decentralized ones, with webs of trust for identity (cryptography nerd in me has to mention that we can make digital signatures today which do not necessarily authenticate a statement is from a specific person, but it's at least been made by someone that we all know, however we know each other, and federate from there if needed). Would be nice if this and other things turned into a systemic change because yeah even the meshnets and shit are still censorsable, if there's not enough resistance.

They’re just bringing back the Cold War censorship. The question is if the global south will actually learn this time or continue worshipping them like they did after the first time.

If you pay attention, like actually pay attention, and fully comprehend all the terrible shit the US state dept (and its various puppet like the EU, NATO, Israel, etc.) does on a daily, even hourly, basis... this is basically all going as expected and predicted for decades.

Not to downplay the shittiness

The Electronic Intidada - relatively small but awesome website and channel on YouTube - got hit with a weeklong ban for reasons unknown

ok so on the one hand its just their youtube channel but on the other hand this is pretty disrespectful

It's afraid