Censorship on big platforms, especially of the right, continues apace. Pretty soon, every non-leftie you know is going to be banned, which only facilitates the rise of alt-tech. Many of the alt-news people I listen to have already established presences on other media: Minds.com instead of Facebook, BitChute instead of YouTube, Gab and Parler instead of Twitter. Here's Paul Joseph Watson talking about his impending disappearance from YouTube:
ADDENDUM: John McCrarey sends the following link to a Twitchy article talking about how Tim Pool just had a video removed from YouTube. It was about censorship on YouTube and Pinterest, so yes: YouTube censored a video about censorship.
Well, it is good that alternatives are out there, but what this ultimately does is just create echo chambers for the left and the right. So much for the marketplace of ideas. The sad thing is that when folks with opposing viewpoints actually do engage, often there are patches of middle ground that can be agreed upon. Or at the very least a better understanding of where each other stands and why. Saying (or forcing someone to) "shut up" is easier than a meaningful debate I suppose.
ReplyDeleteI tried to argue a similar point about echo chambers when I criticized the Dissenter app: righties can get on Dissenter and rant all they want, but they're really only doing it for their own sewing circles because the lefties, unaware that Dissenter even exists, won't know they're receiving any reactions. I no longer bother with Dissenter: what's the point if there's to be no interaction? I got some pushback from certain righties after having written my Dissenter post, both in my comments thread and on Dissenter itself. Some folks seem to think that, if the choice is between an echo chamber and nothing at all (because the left keeps deplatforming everything), then an echo chamber is better than nothing. Maybe they have a point. I don't know. But to me, a lack of cross-pollination of ideas is, long term, a very dangerous thing.
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