Skip to content
May 24, 2022
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • YouTube
  • Instagram
  • Reddit
  • Telegram
  • TikTok
  • LinkedIn
Orinoco Tribune – News and opinion pieces about Venezuela and beyond

Orinoco Tribune – News and opinion pieces about Venezuela and beyond

From Venezuela and made by Venezuelan Chavistas

Primary Menu
  • News
  • Opinion
  • Our Sources
    • Venezuelan Sources
    • International Sources
  • About us
    • About us
    • Who we are – Becoming a Volunteer
    • Contact us
    • Editorial guidelines for contributors
  • Categories
    • Politics
    • Economy
    • Security and Defense
    • International
      • Africa
      • Asia
      • Europe
      • Oceania
      • US/Canada
    • Latin America and ALBA-TCP
      • South America
      • Central America and the Caribbean (+Mexico)
    • Ideology-Commune-Labor
    • Health-Education-Sport-Culture-Technology
    • Solidarity and Social Movements
    • OT Originals
  • Support us
    • Tax Deductible Donations: AfGJ Fiscal Sponsorship Program
    • PayPal and Credit Cards
    • Patreon (recurrent donations)
Light/Dark Button
Subscribe
  • Home
  • Opinion
  • Censorship by Algorithm Does far More Damage Than Conventional Censorship
  • International
  • Opinion
  • US/Canada

Censorship by Algorithm Does far More Damage Than Conventional Censorship

Caitlin Johnstone January 27, 2022 6 min read

By Caitlin Johnstone – Jan 24, 2022

Journalist Jonathan Cook has a new blog post out on his experience with being throttled into invisibility by Silicon Valley algorithmic suppression that will ring all too familiar for any online content creators who’ve been sufficiently critical of official western narratives over the last few years.

“My blog posts once attracted tens of thousands of shares,” Cook writes. “Then, as the algorithms tightened, it became thousands. Now, as they throttle me further, shares can often be counted in the hundreds. ‘Going viral’ is a distant memory.”

“I won’t be banned,” he adds. “I will fade incrementally, like a small star in the night sky – one among millions – gradually eclipsed as its neighbouring suns grow ever bigger and brighter. I will disappear from view so slowly you won’t even notice.”

Cook says this began after the 2016 US election, which was when a major narrative push began for Silicon Valley corporations to eliminate “fake news” from their platforms and soon saw tech executives brought before the US Senate and told that they must “quell information rebellions” and come up with a mission statement expressing their commitment to “prevent the fomenting of discord” online.

RELATED CONTENT: ASPI – The Gov’t-Funded Conspiracist Think Tank now Controlling Your Social Media Feed

My latest: Is it already too late to say goodbye? Because those independent voices in the new media you so value will wither and decay like autumn leaves once they have no audience https://t.co/X6wbmpgHBe

— Jonathan Cook (@Jonathan_K_Cook) January 22, 2022

Arguably the most significant political moment in the United States since 9/11 and its immediate aftermath was when Democrats and their allied institutions concluded that Donald Trump’s election was a failure not of establishment politics but of establishment narrative control. From that point onwards, any online media creator who consistently disputes the narratives promoted by the same news outlets who’ve lied to us about every war has seen their view counts and new follows slashed.

“In case anyone wants to know how Facebook suppression works – I have 330,000 followers there but they’ve stopped showing my posts to many people,” Redacted Tonight host Lee Camp tweeted in January 2018. “I used to gain 6,000 followers a week. I now gain 500 and FB unsubscribes people without their knowledge – so my total number never increases.”I saw my own shares and view counts rapidly diminish in 2017 as well, and saw my new Facebook page follows suddenly slow to a virtual standstill. It wasn’t until I started using mailing lists and giving indie media outlets blanket permission to republish all my content that I was able to grow my audience at all.

And Silicon Valley did eventually admit that it was in fact actively censoring voices who fall outside the mainstream consensus. In order to disprove the false right-wing narrative that Google only censors rightist voices, the CEO of Google’s parent company Alphabet admitted in 2020 to algorithmically throttling World Socialist Website. Last year the CEO of Google-owned YouTube acknowledged that the platform uses algorithms to elevate “authoritative sources” while suppressing “borderline content” not considered authoritative, which apparently even includes just marginally establishment-critical left-of-center voices like Kyle Kulinski. Facebook spokeswoman Lauren Svensson said in 2018 that if the platform’s fact-checkers (including the state-funded establishment narrative management firm Atlantic Council) rule that a Facebook user has been posting false news, moderators will “dramatically reduce the distribution of all of their Page-level or domain-level content on Facebook.”

People make a big deal any time a controversial famous person gets removed from a major social media platform, and rightly so; we cannot allow such brazen acts of censorship to become normalized. The goal is to normalize internet censorship on every front, and the powerful will push for that normalization to be expanded at every opportunity. Whether you dislike the controversial figure being deplatformed on a given day is entirely irrelevant; it’s not about them, it’s about expanding and normalizing internet censorship protocols on monopolistic government-tied speech platforms.

But far, far more consequential than overt censorship of individuals is censorship by algorithm. No individual being silenced does as much real-world damage to free expression and free thought as the way ideas and information which aren’t authorized by the powerful are being actively hidden from public view, while material which serves the interests of the powerful is the first thing they see in their search results. It ensures that public consciousness remains chained to the establishment narrative matrix.

It doesn’t matter that you have free speech if nobody ever hears you speak. Even in the most overtly totalitarian regimes on earth you can say whatever you want alone in a soundproof room.

That’s the biggest loophole the so-called free democracies of the western world have found in their quest to regulate online speech. By allowing these monopolistic megacorporations to become the sources everyone goes to for information (and even actively helping them along that path as in for example Google’s research grants from the CIA and NSA), it’s possible to tweak algorithms in such a way that dissident information exists online, but nobody ever sees it.

You’ve probably noticed this if you’ve tried to search YouTube for videos which don’t align with the official narratives of western governments and media lately. That search function used to work like magic; like it was reading your mind. Now it’s almost impossible to find the information you’re looking for unless you’re trying to find out what the US State Department wants you to think. It’s the same with Google searches and Facebook, and because those giant platforms dictate what information gets seen by the general public, that wild information bias toward establishment narratives bleeds into other common areas of interaction like Twitter as well.

RELATED CONTENT: Meta Censors Anti-Imperialist Speech in Obedience to the US Government

The idea is to let most people freely share dissident ideas and information about empire, war, capitalism, authoritarianism and propaganda, but to make it increasingly difficult for them to get their content seen and heard by people, and to make their going viral altogether impossible. To avoid the loud controversies and uncomfortable public scrutiny brought on by acts of overt censorship as much as possible while silently sweeping unauthorized speech behind the curtain. To make noncompliant voices “disappear from view so slowly you won’t even notice,” as Cook put it.

The status quo is not working. Our ecosystem is dying, we appear to be rapidly approaching a high risk of direct military confrontation between nuclear-armed nations, and our world is rife with injustice, inequality, oppression and exploitation. None of this is going to change until the public begins awakening to the problems with the current status quo so we can begin organizing a mass-scale push toward healthier systems. And that’s never going to happen as long as information is locked down in the way that it is.

Whoever controls the narrative controls the world. And as more and more people get their information about what’s happening in the world from online sources, Silicon Valley algorithm manipulation has already become one of the most consequential forms of narrative control.

 

Featured image: Google company.

(Substack)

Want More?

Don't want to be a victim of the Algorithm?

SIGN UP TO RECEIVE OUR WEEKLY NEWSLETTER WITH ALL YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT VENEZUELA

We don’t spam! Read our privacy policy for more info.

Caitlin Johnstone
Website | + posts

Rogue journalist. Bogan socialist. Anarcho-psychonaut. Guerrilla poet. Utopia prepper.

  • Caitlin Johnstone
    #molongui-disabled-link
    April 20, 2019
    Debunking All The Assange Smears
  • Caitlin Johnstone
    #molongui-disabled-link
    May 5, 2019
    Venezuela: Establishment Talking Points Translation Key
  • Caitlin Johnstone
    #molongui-disabled-link
    May 23, 2019
    US Accuses Syria Of More Chemical Attacks Just As Chemical Weapons Narrative Crumbles
  • Caitlin Johnstone
    #molongui-disabled-link
    May 25, 2019
    Professional Assange Smearers Finally Realize His Fate Is Tied To Theirs
Tags: censorship google Jonathan Cook media Politics Propaganda silicon valley Social Media US Imperialism

Share this:

  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Pocket (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Telegram (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on WhatsApp (Opens in new window)
  • Click to email this to a friend (Opens in new window)
  • Click to print (Opens in new window)

Continue Reading

Previous Previous post:

Presidential Recall Referendum Deemed Inadmissible by Venezuela’s Electoral Authority

CNE rector Tania D'Amelio informing the results of the collection of signatures within the recall referendum schedule approved by the electoral body. Photo: Wilmer Errades / Últimas Noticias.
Next Next post:

Repsol Has Not Responded to Environmental Disaster on Peru’s Coast

The environmental disaster has paralyzed fishing and tourist activity (Photo: EFE).

Tax deductible donations

One time donations

Recurrent donations

Calendar

May 2022
M T W T F S S
 1
2345678
9101112131415
16171819202122
23242526272829
3031  
« Apr    

NEWS: Most Viewed 72 Hours

Categories

Subscribe to Our Weekly Newsletter

We keep your data private and share your data only with third parties that make this service possible. Read our Privacy Policy.

Check your inbox or spam folder to confirm your subscription.

OPINION: Most Viewed 72 hours

We are on Telegram


Receive our news directly in your cellphone or PC, join us on our TELEGRAM channel: https://t.me/OrinocoTribune1

Download TELEGRAM, click the link above and then press the JOIN button.

We are Copyleft not Copyright


Creative Commons License
All Orinoco Tribune's work is free to use and licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

We are on Reddit


If you are more into REDDIT, join our Orinoco Tribune Community.
Just click below and then click JOIN
https://www.reddit.com/r/OrinocoTribune/

 

  • News
  • Opinion
  • Our Sources
  • About us
  • Categories
  • Support us
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • YouTube
  • Instagram
  • Reddit
  • Telegram
  • TikTok
  • LinkedIn
Copyleft - No rights reserved. | ChromeNews by AF themes.

Orinoco Tribune needs your help on our 3 ½ year anniversary

Help us reach some small goals by the end of May

* We are currently at 25% on our annual goal. Help us reach at least 30%

*In Patreon we are below $600. Help us reach $660 (only 14 pledges of $5 each will take us there)

HELP US KEEP MAKING A DIFFERENCE PROVIDING GOOD QUALITY ALTERNATIVE INDEPENDENT NEWS FROM THE SOUTH

             

loading Cancel
Post was not sent - check your email addresses!
Email check failed, please try again
Sorry, your blog cannot share posts by email.