{"id":36619,"date":"2018-08-14T07:21:53","date_gmt":"2018-08-14T12:21:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=36619"},"modified":"2018-08-14T07:21:53","modified_gmt":"2018-08-14T12:21:53","slug":"censorship-is-what-happens-when-powerful-people-get-scared","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=36619","title":{"rendered":"Censorship Is What Happens When Powerful People Get Scared"},"content":{"rendered":"<header class=\"post-header \">\n<h3 class=\"post-title\"><a href=\"https:\/\/libertyblitzkrieg.com\/2018\/08\/13\/censorship-is-what-happens-when-powerful-people-get-scared\/\">Censorship Is What Happens When Powerful People Get Scared<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/header>\n<div class=\"post-content\">\n<p><strong>\u201cOnly the weak hit the fly with a hammer.\u201d<br \/>\n<\/strong>\u2013 Bangambiki Habyarimana<\/p>\n<p>Anyone who tells you the recent escalation of\u00a0censorship by U.S. tech giants is merely a reflection of private companies making independent decisions is either lying or dangerously ignorant.<\/p>\n<p>In the case of Facebook, the road from pseudo-platform to willing and enthusiastic tool of establishment power players is fairly straightforward. It really got going earlier this year when issues surrounding egregious privacy violations in the case of Cambridge Analytica (stuff that had been <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/libertyblitzkrieg.com\/2018\/03\/22\/the-only-reason-were-examining-facebooks-sleazy-behavior-is-because-trump-won\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">going on for years<\/a><\/strong>) could finally be linked to the Trump campaign. \u00a0It was at this point that powerful and nefarious forces spotted an opportunity to leverage the company\u2019s gigantic influence in distributing news and opinion for their own ends. Rather than hold executives to account and break up the company, the choice was made to commandeer and weaponize the platform. This is where we stand today.<\/p>\n<p>Let\u2019s not whitewash history though. These tech companies have been compliant, out of control government snitches for a long time. Thanks to Edward Snowden, we\u2019re aware of the deep and longstanding cooperation between these lackeys and U.S. intelligence agencies in the realm of mass surveillance. As such, the most recent transformation of these companies into full fledged information gatekeepers should be seen in its proper context; merely as a dangerous continuation and expansion of an already entrenched reality.<\/p>\n<p>But it\u2019s all out in the open now. Facebook isn\u2019t even hiding the fact that it\u2019s outsourcing much of its \u201cfake news\u201d analysis to\u00a0the Atlantic Council, a think tank funded by NATO, Gulf States and defense contractors. As reported by <a href=\"https:\/\/www.reuters.com\/article\/us-facebook-cyber\/u-s-think-tanks-tiny-lab-helps-facebook-battle-fake-social-media-idUSKBN1KS22N\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><em>Reuters<\/em><\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><em>Facebook began looking for outside help amid criticism for failing to rein in Russian propaganda ahead of the 2016 presidential elections\u2026<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Censorship Is What Happens When Powerful People Get Scared \u201cOnly the weak hit the fly with a hammer.\u201d \u2013 Bangambiki Habyarimana Anyone who tells you the recent escalation of\u00a0censorship by U.S. tech giants is merely a reflection of private companies making independent decisions is either lying or dangerously ignorant. In the case of Facebook, the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[120,2299,1493,4285,6174,1169,21202],"class_list":["post-36619","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-liberty","tag-censorship","tag-control","tag-facebook","tag-liberty-blitzkrieg","tag-michael-krieger","tag-social-media","tag-tech-giants"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36619","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=36619"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36619\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36620,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36619\/revisions\/36620"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=36619"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=36619"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=36619"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}