In what feels like the 2018 version of “book burning” Facebook and YouTube push to censor the alternative (new) voice.
Generally speaking the voice of the media has been finely tuned and constructed to speak from a specific narrative.
This is evident in our political “leaders” that serve corporate interests over society, the decisions that are consistently made that do not benefit the majority of humanity and the rampant inequality locally and globally.
This has been the way the “mainstream” media (what we call “old media”) has worked since its inception. Different media organisations works closely with political and corporate interests, and never speak for or against certain selected ideas.
90% of media is controlled by 6 multi billion dollar corporations: Comcast, News-Corp, Disney, Viacom, Time Warner and CBS, so it is hard to expect the old media to serve the “people” in any way.
Then recently something very different happened. Platforms such as YouTube and Facebook turned up and allowed those who were not financially incentivised to speak from a non influenced point of view.
This birthed many large media groups in a very small amount of time and while still remaining very small in comparison to the bigger groups, some of the well accepted narratives were challenged. This had a 2 fold effect: firstly it shared stories that were going unnoticed and secondly, it made the mainstream report on events they usually avoid.
Some notable events that were inspired by the alternative (new) voice:
Amy Goodman, the host of “Democracy Now! Broke the story of Standing Rock, when Dakota Access pipeline company “Energy Transfer Partners” attacked Native Americans with dogs and pepper spray. This sparked viral coverage and global outrage over the whole story.
On October 7th, 2016, WikiLeaks published thousands of emails belonging to John Podesta. Podesta was Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign Chairman. The emails showed damning evidence that mainstream (old) media is scripted & controlled.
Medical cannabis is also something that was pushed hard from the alternative (new) media, with the old media viciously attacking it from its inception. Medical cannabis is now legal in many places and even available on prescription.
For the last few years Facebook and YouTube have been slowly censoring this alternative (new) voice, the one that has been helping to share information that is honest and not corrupted. In the last few months this has become a lot more vicious.
Many notable websites and YouTube channels are being targeted as they vamp up the effort to kill platforms that have been honestly built.
Facebook, Google & YouTube Censorship At An All Time High — What Ever Happened To Free Speech?
This control of information is not something new, however, the “leaking” of news that challenges the control is. This is the driving force behind these changes and it is all being done under the name of combating “fake news”.
We have a voice and that which we choose to consume matters. Please support freedom of speech by talking about this issue and making it clear to Facebook and YouTube that we are not happy with the changes.
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By Luke Miller, Guest writer
