If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear. (George Orwell)
What the Arab world needs most is free expression. (Jamal Khashoggi)
We share a recent post from beyondmoney.net as it proposes concrete steps to avoid the social media owners’ control over free public opinion.
In his famous dystopian novel, 1984, George Orwell describes a world in which people’s actions and words are closely monitored in order to detect and punish thoughtcrime. It is a world in which the ruling power structure has the means to preempt the expression of any idea or story that might challenge the official narrative of events and reality. Though a little late by Orwell’s reckoning, that world has all but arrived.
The development of the internet and the worldwide web brought, for a time, tremendous power to ordinary people to communicate and inform one another directly, bypassing the established news filters and centralized control of information. But in recent years, new corporate megaliths have emerged that have the power to shift control back in favor of “Big Brother.” We have become so dependent upon private corporate media platforms, like Facebook, Twitter, Google and YouTube, that they are able to manipulate our thoughts and behavior. To be banned from those channels means to effectively be banished from participation in political discourse. Corporate power on such a scale inevitably ends up being complicit with political oligarchies in controlling public perceptions and defining “reality.” The hyped-up battle against “fake news” is really a battle against free speech.
Facebook teams up with the “Thought Police” to purge dissenting voices
Facebook’s purging of hundreds of pages and accounts in recent days has been widely reported. The purges have been done based on allegations of “spam,” and “inauthentic behavior,” or of providing “Russian propaganda.” But there’s much more to it than that.
An article in the online journal, Global Research, describes the arrangement that Facebook made five months ago with the Atlantic Council to, “prevent [their] service from being abused during elections.” And who is the Atlantic Council? According to the article, the Atlantic Council “is a think tank that is essentially funded by NATO, weapons manufacturers, Middle-Eastern oil-state monarchies, billionaires and different branches of the US military. In short, it has been described as being nothing less than NATO’s unofficial propaganda wing. The Atlantic Council doesn’t shy away from its political intents across the world, which can be seen solely by looking at who sits on its directors board – the crème de la crème when it comes to US neocons & war criminals: Henry Kissinger, Condoleezza Rice, Frank Carlucci, James A. Baker, R. George P. Shultz, James Woolsey, Leon Panetta, Colin Powell, Robert Gates, and many more.”
The article goes on to say that, “Many of the pages and accounts taken down have been political (often leftist), anti-war, independent journalists and media outlets that are known to go against the grain of mainstream media outlets.” You can read the complete article here.
So, what can we do?
Let’s all dump Facebook, as well as Twitter, YouTube and all the other massive, proprietary, data mining and propaganda platforms. I know that is not so easy to do, but alternatives do exist, and more of them are emerging every day. Here is a list of 6 Alternatives to Facebook. This article provides a list of 11 Facebook alternatives, and Fox News, surprisingly, provides a list of, Secure alternatives to Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. My search engine, DuckDuckGo, turns up several more.
One Facebook alternative that has gotten significant funding support of late is MeWe. A recent article reports that MeWe has thus far managed to raise $10 million to support its development. The article quotes MeWe founder and CEO, Mark Weinstein: “It is clear that the world wants a better social network that treats its member as customers to serve, not data to sell. We’ve built a social networking experience that has a remarkable suite of features people love and none of the BS. MeWe has no ads, no spyware, no content manipulation, no facial recognition, and no Russians (or anyone) paying to show you fake news.”
Well, that sounds promising, but time will tell how real it is.
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