Within 12 hours of each other Facebook, Apple, YouTube and Spotify have banned Alex Jones from their platforms.
Only yesterday I wrote a detailed article about why this cannot be the solution and does not mean we will now end up being better informed.
Lets assume Alex Jones is in fact producing only hate and fake news. Even then I do not support a platform that censors him. Because truth can only be found in a decentralised protocol.
Many people seem happy and celebrate the reduced visibility for fake news. But this means that facebook is now involved in the business of deciding what is good news vs bad news. They choose who to feature and who to silence and in that way create an official narrative. They control what 2.3 billion people will see as their daily news. That is a massive amount of power.
In the past this power did only exist in theory and was at best used for targeted adds. But today it is clear for everyone that this power is being used for political goals. Right now these goals may be acceptable for most, but once a line has been crossed it is hard to go back. It is only a matter of time until it becomes normal to get censored and banned for voicing non-standard views.
Today is not the day to celebrate a blow against fake news. It is the day where the first building block for a new empire of fake news was laid down. These things always start with motives that many people can rally behind. Chinese internet censorship first targeted child pornography. Who could be against that? But then the same powers were eventually applied to censor enemies of the state and unwanted parts of history. Surveillance is first installed to combat terrorists and then expanded to spy on the own citizens. Political control of mass media is now being established to fight fake news, before it turns into blind propaganda.
But we also do have the necessary answers. Crypto makes it possible to build fully decentralised and censorship resistant networks. Nobody owns any part of the network and there is no central party. Steem is one example. My hope is that the old centralised media will just die and give room for a new generation of free platforms. Todays actions might just be another nail in their coffin.
Another thing that stinks is that so many different platforms have taken the same step within 12 hours. I could be a coincidence, but they might also have developed a common vision for the future. In the worst case this is the result of political pressure.
I agree that is a slippery slope once censorship of any kind is applied to social media. It would be far better to teach people to question whatever they read and to do their own research.