Y'know what's the worst part about all the internet censorship and cyber surveillance? The fact that no one notices it

And no one cares

i notice it when youtube hides my comments for others :(.

@joewilliams007 why would youtube do that?

@Lensflare might be due to my use of some words.. but everytime i comment now it breaks my brain as i have to write everything as friendly as possible. like even 'wtf' might get unlisted.. and i also have a feeling that they marked my account and have stricter rules for me. but i dont want to get conspiracy level thoughts here. oh and in live streams its the worst. i get censored so fast. but not because of spam

Cyber surveillance is scary indeed but censorship is actually pretty rare. For the most part it's just private distributors choosing what they're willing to distribute. If this constitutes a problem, the solution to it would be a "hipster" consumer mentality where people actively seek out indie media providers. Screening content is a distributor's inalienable right and what's permitted is subjective, so as long as the single biggest provider serves the overwhelming majority of traffic they will be the arbiter of what is acceptable behavior.

I can also imagine a legal framework where

1. Distributors are fundamentally responsible for the identifiability of their users
2. Distributors are not responsible for the content they distribute in the name of users. Instead, the users are responsible for it
3. The extent and nature of filtering used can be limited in laws to guarantee certain notions of fairness on any public forum

Somebody has to be accountable for all communication if we wish to regulate information distribution at all.

Even if you tell people it happens they refuse to believe it. I have seen the most egregious uses of censorship the last 3 years. What is really amazing is people encourage this behavior because other people's opinions don't match what the TV told them. NPC's dominate social media now. People are willingly giving up free speech because some people shouldn't have independent opinions.

I think around late 2020 I started to see the world very differently. I had seen it differently about 20 years earlier, but I didn't know what to do with that information. But in late 2020 things changed as my world view was severely challenged. Never been the same since. All MSM completely lost its sway on my thinking. Now if I see an MSM article I just assume it is mostly if not all false.

@lorentz number two only works if the iron law of oligarchy stops existing or mattering.

Organizations, including governments, must always attempt to grow. Grow or die. So they will always, sooner or later seek control over all information and medical channels.

The cheapest way of doing that is to make platform and network providers responsible. Theres little utility in pursuing individuals.

People see and people do care.

They are currently being heavily divided on social value issues that in the long run would be more efficiently handled by being decided on a regional level.

Meanwhile we are all being gradually squeezed, economically looted, and being very insidiously pitted against one another while the very conflict created is used to justify ever increasing general repression policies creeping into every aspect and walk of life.

All of this started because the banks and media conglomerates that serve them realized occupy wallstreet was just the beginning and they got scared.

But occupy isnt dead. And it goes beyond all notions of right or left.
It's been waiting this whole time, for people to come back to it.

@Wisecrack Of course the natural incentive is to make your users' content agreeable. But in many countries laws can be enforced against corporations, even if the power of the state is finite, so if we decide that this is how we want the internet to work and agree in large enough numbers to pass a couple laws about it, we can discourage corporate content filtering and make transparent agencies - or at least ones that are subservient to the democratic process - take over the duty of deciding what is allowable behavior.

Then again, literally every distributor or venue in the physical world is allowed to pick who they're willing to host, so I need to stress that this is a new initiative and not an effort to reclaim a past norm.

"Look's like you had too much to think"
(See image)