[Craic] Peak Internet — The Censorship Bubble Is About to Burst
Arthur Blomme
art at integralshift.ca
Fri Jun 12 09:12:57 PDT 2020
Peak Internet — The Censorship Bubble Is About to Burst
Story at-a-glance
* May 20, 2020, Infowars host Alex Jones revealed Joe Rogan had signed
a $100 million exclusivity contract with Spotify for his Joe Rogan
Experience Podcast
* According to Rogan, the move is his way to strike back against
YouTube censorship
* With 8.49 million subscribers, Rogan is one of YouTube’s biggest
channels. His departure is predicted by many to be a serious blow to
YouTube. Rogan’s move matters because the media landscape is
changing, and Rogan — and others like him — are the news now
* Whether Spotify will in fact live up to Rogan's expectation of
non-bias remains to be seen. Two of my coronavirus interviews have
been deleted off Spotify without recourse
* Spotify claims it only prohibits illegal content, hate content and
infringing content. My interviews about coronavirus with Brian Hoyer
and Judy Mikovits, Ph.D., clearly do not fall under any of these
categories, yet were removed without explanation
Over the past year, I've written extensively about the initially
creeping — and then sweeping — censorship occurring online. Initially,
the censorship vortex was on vaccines. Social media platforms and Google
all started suppressing and then outright banning content raising
questions about vaccine safety
<https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2019/05/28/vaccine-censorship.aspx>.
I warned everyone that this would eventually spread to other topics that
might threaten a corporate bottom line. The only surprise was how
quickly that happened. Within months, Google
<https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2019/06/24/google-latest-algorithm-update-buries-mercola.aspx>
started shadow banning and hiding holistic health sites, including this
one, in its search results.
In August 2019, I made the decision to leave Facebook
<https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2019/08/13/mercola-leaving-facebook.aspx>
due to its clear censoring of valid and truthful information. One year
from the time social media platforms began censoring vaccine
information, they all started banning views on COVID-19 treatments that
differ from that of the World Health Organization.
The Dangerous Suppression of Freedom of Speech
YouTube's CEO even went on the record stating they will block any video
that goes against WHO guidance
<https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2020/05/05/youtube-censorship.aspx>
on the COVID-19 pandemic. Shockingly, this includes videos and articles
by medical doctors, emergency care specialists and researchers who share
their clinical experiences, recommendations and scientific findings.
Just one of countless examples was a May 17, 2020, Full Measure News
report^1 in which Sharyl Attkisson interviewed doctors reporting good
results with hydroxychloroquine. The segment also looked at the
potential financial motives driving the mass media's disdain for the
drug, while promoting remdesivir and as-of-yet-unavailable vaccines.
Just the News, which reported the takedown of Full Measure's video,
writes:^2
/"Dr. Jane Orient, the executive director of the Association of
American Physicians and Surgeons as well as a clinical lecturer at
the University of Arizona College of Medicine, urged viewers to
'look at the money' when it comes to the two drugs. /
/'There's no big profits made in hydroxychloroquine,' said Orient.
'It's very cheap, easy to manufacture, been around for 70 years.
It's generic. /
/Remdesivir is a new drug that could be very expensive and very
lucrative if it's ever approved. So I think we really do have to
consider there's some financial interest involved here' … /
/'These are organized efforts,' [Attkisson] said, arguing that
politically biased parties are behind efforts to remove or censor
contrarian information on social media …/
/She noted recent efforts by Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff, the
chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, to pressure social
media companies to censor and downgrade 'harmful'
coronavirus-related material and push users instead toward
information from the World Health Organization. 'I don't know why
we're allowing this,' Attkisson said. 'Nobody appointed Adam Schiff
to police our content on social media.'"/
Joe Rogan Ditches YouTube
May 20, 2020, Infowars host Alex Jones revealed Joe Rogan has signed an
exclusivity contract with Spotify for his Joe Rogan Experience Podcast.
You can find the video here
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eV6n9wPUQOk&feature=emb_logo>. Rogan
had reportedly asked Jones to make the announcement.
According to Rogan, the move is his way to strike back against YouTube
censorship. Granted, the $100 million paycheck from Spotify probably
didn't make it a particularly difficult decision. It also turned out to
be a stroke of genius for Spotify, the stock of which jumped 8.4%, or
more than $5 billion dollars, after Rogan announced the move on Twitter.^3
Jones was one of the first controversial figures to be banned from
YouTube, which appears to be the reason he gave Jones the scoop. The
straw that broke the camel's back, Rogan says, was YouTube's decision to
block differing opinions on COVID-19, as he wanted to interview a
variety of doctors and experts about it.
But even before the pandemic, Rogan had bristled against YouTube's
decision to demonetize or remove certain interviews. Rogan told Jones he
sees YouTube's behavior as "un-American" and "anti-human." Jones wonders
if Rogan's move is symbolic of "peak internet." Possibly, it's a sign
that the censorship bubble is about to burst.
Advertisement
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Rogan Rules New Media Landscape
With 8.52 million subscribers as of May 27, 2020,^4 Rogan is currently
one of YouTube's biggest channels. His departure is predicted by many to
be a serious blow to YouTube's bottom line. As noted by Bari Weiss in a
New York Times op-ed,^5 Rogan's move matters because the media landscape
is changing, and Rogan — and others like him — are "the news" now.
/"//The timing of Rogan's rise and the Old Guard's disintegration is
not coincidental," Weiss writes. "His success was made possible, at
least in part, by legacy media's blind spots./
/While GQ puts Pharrell gowned in a yellow sleeping bag on the cover
of its '//new masculinity' issue (introduced by the editor
explaining that the men's magazine 'isn't really trying to be
exclusively for or about men at all'), Joe Rogan swings kettlebells
and bow-hunts elk. /
/Men are hungry. He's serving steak, rare. Condé Nast, GQ's
publisher, has laid off some 100 employees since the pandemic began.
Meantime, 'The Joe Rogan Experience' has 190 million downloads a month./
/His success signals a profound shift, or several of them — a shift
in what people want to talk about, how they want to hear it, and who
they want to hear it from."/
Geopolitical blogger Tom Luongo comments on Rogan's appeal, saying:^6
/"Rogan is an anomaly in podcasting, hell for that matter, all of
media and gods bless him for it. Who else can get tens of millions
of people to tune into him talking with someone for three hours? CNN
can't get people to watch them for five minutes in airports …/
/Rogan's willingness to talk with and listen to anyone is his
greatest asset. It is the key to his rise and his future success on
Spotify, who desperately needs a big name to keep their business
afloat./
/Because in an age of endless spectacle and TV screens and websites
crammed to the gills with graphics to distract you from the content,
the simplicity of a conversation between two people who aren't
shouting at each other has become a welcome node of sanity … /
/Joe Rogan has now told the entire country that he's had enough. And
we needed someone like Joe to do this. That said, Rogan is only one
half of the story, however. Because at the same time, one of these
platforms needed to break away from the herd and welcome the
dissenters. /
/For Spotify, Joe Rogan is the 'killer app' they needed to
differentiate themselves as non-partisan and begin the exodus away
from the big platforms who have become nothing but partisan."/
Spotify Censors Two of My Coronavirus Interviews
Whether Spotify will in fact live up to the expectation of non-bias
remains to be seen. I for one have my doubts, as two of my coronavirus
interviews have summarily been deleted off Spotify without recourse.
Spotify claims it only prohibits illegal content, hate content and
infringing content. My interviews about coronavirus with Brian Hoyer
<https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2020/04/12/why-is-the-world-more-vulnerable-to-a-global-pandemic.aspx>
and Judy Mikovits
<https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2020/05/24/is-the-new-coronavirus-created-in-a-lab.aspx>,
Ph.D., clearly do not fall under any of these categories, yet Spotify
removed them. So, so much for being a platform for uncensored
expression. What's worse, there is no way to dispute Spotify's removal
of these shows.
Censorship Threatens Health, Democracy and Freedom
Like Rogan, I have taken my stand. I put up a firewall to prevent Google
from indexing my pages, and I will never conform to "consensus reality"
just to get my Google ranking back. I've also removed Facebook scripts.
It's unfortunate, but the way it stands right now, we have to go
old-school and share information we find valuable through word-of-mouth,
by text, email and private message.
As for content on this site, we have built in simple sharing tools at
the top of each article so you can easily email or text interesting
articles to your friends and family.
My information is here because all of you support and share it, and we
can do this without Big Tech's support. In times like these, sharing
information that is not readily available to all is nothing short of a
revolutionary act.
Wherever and whenever possible, we must all fight against the oppression
of censorship. Democracy hangs in the balance. Everyone must realize
that without freedom of speech and opposing viewpoints, there can be no
democracy. Instead, what you have is a totalitarian regime.
As it stands, that regime is not even made up of elected officials but
unelected individuals representing for-profit multinational
corporations. It's time to break free. To do that, consider these
suggestions:
Become a subscriber to my newsletter and encourage your friends and
family to do the same. This is the easiest and safest way to make sure
you'll stay up to date on important health and environmental issues.
If you have any friends or relatives who are seriously interested in
their health, please share important articles with them and encourage
them to subscribe to our newsletter.
Consider dumping any Android phone the next time you get a phone.
Android is a Google operating system and will seek to gather as much
data as they can about you for their benefit.
Use the internal Mercola.com search engine
<https://search.mercola.com/results.aspx?q=google#stq=google> when
searching for articles on my site.
Boycott Google <http://www.goopocalypse.com/> by avoiding any and all
Google products:
• Stop using Google search engines. Alternatives include Qwant
<https://www.qwant.com/?l=en> and Swisscows <https://swisscows.ch/>
• Uninstall Google Chrome and use Brave or Opera browser
<https://www.opera.com/download> instead, available for all computers
and mobile devices.^7 From a security perspective, Opera is far superior
to Chrome and offers a free VPN service (virtual private network) to
further preserve your privacy
• If you have a Gmail account, try a non-Google email service such as
ProtonMail <https://protonmail.com/>,^8 an encrypted email service based
in Switzerland
• Stop using Google docs. Digital Trends has published an article
suggesting a number of alternatives^9
• If you're a high school student, do not convert the Google accounts
you created as a student into personal accounts
Sign the "Don't be evil" petition <https://citizensagainstmonopoly.org/>
created by Citizens Against Monopoly
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