There's a far Greater Danger Than Speech Suppression, and it Needs to be Discussed
Most of us here at Steemit are fully cognizant of the war against free speech, and its profound implications. The forces that seem to be in a full sprint towards the destruction of the 1st Amendment in the western world have largely dropped their masks, even openly bragging about their efficiency in marginalizing and silencing opposing political and cultural beliefs. This group is largely composed of social climbers and careerists, those who willingly sell their souls for swift advancement through the corrupt worlds of DC, NY, and Silicon Valley, along with a subset of those who fully recognize that these tactics are a weapon and have no qualms about wielding it to bludgeon their opponents, and a smaller subset of naive true believers, poor souls who have somehow been convinced through shrewd mental gymnastics that preventing open and honest discussion is a net-positive.
This was our first Amendment for good reason, its importance can't be overstated. The health of any Republic/Democracy hinges entirely on both sides being allowed to speak freely. Our politics, laws, and our culture at large are all downstream from this. . . these are all shaped from the ground up by the cumulative products of free and open discussion and debate. When we lose this freedom, the stage is set to lose everything else that makes us great as a nation, piece by piece. The founding fathers fought so hard to avoid exactly this type of dismantling, which they knew was an eternal threat.
However, there exists a far less discussed development in our modern technological world, with even more profound implications. . . a development most of us can't yet wrap our heads around or fully grasp the significance of, and yet it affects all of us whether we recognize it or not, more so by the day. Not speech suppression or prevention, but speech hijacking and infiltration. For lack of a better term, since this is relatively unprecedented territory and we'll have to slowly invent new language to best quantify and communicate it, and because I'm not finding any single word that accurately conveys the point, I'll refer to this threat with the acronym SHIMS: 'Speech Hijacking/Infiltration/Manipulation/Shepherding'.
Human beings tend to seek power and control. When our moral/ethical framework begins to break down, the worst elements among us swiftly and inevitably seize control. This is both a historical reality and an intuitive truth, a logical inevitability: if two men are competing towards any goal, one being bound by a code of conduct and ethics, the other having no such fetters, the latter is virtually guaranteed to prevail. After he does so, he's going to tend to promote others like him, and thus the cancer spreads.
Having attained such power, the goal then becomes increasing and maintaining said power by any means necessary, using any and all tools at one's disposal. Seeking justifications to prevent your opponents from having a voice is extremely effective, but in the age of the internet, this can't be done in a foolproof and universal manner: there will always exist some little corner beyond control, where freedom of speech still rules the day, and this represents an immense danger, a threat with the potential to unravel the entire corrupt edifice. If these voices can't be suppressed, what's the solution? How can this threat be nipped in the bud before it finds its footing, and becomes a very real force to be reckoned with?
The infuriating and depressing answer is infiltration: simply toss on the uniform of your foe, jump into the fray, and seek to create confusion, chaos, dissension, and disunity. Using an advanced knowledge of psychology (especially as it pertains to group dynamics), a single individual can run a discussion thread, even entire forums, into the ground.
SHIMS can take control and effortlessly dominate environments like Reddit, 4chan, Voat, and of course Facebook and Twitter are practically the epitome of SHIMS in action. Medium, Steemit, Newslogue, Quora. . . even Minds.com, though thankfully structured (purposefully or not) in such a way that provides it some immunity, is not completely safe.
Your every google search result can be tailored with personalized algorithmic precision to nudge you in various idelogical directions, hiding certain results and promoting others, especially with regards to issues of political or cultural or 'conspiratorial' import.
As our technological prowess as a species continues its steady march forward, so does the increased control over hearts and minds by those currently in positions of power and influence:
Have you found an especially dangerous post, providing information to the public that you desperately want to keep hidden? Simply become an active contributor to the discussion, and seek to subtly derail it over time into irrelevant rabbit-holes, discrediting the core idea and emphasizing useless periphery ideas as you go. Have you found an especially intelligent and informed individual making valid and extremely inconvenient points? Attack them mercilessly, painting them as a shill, and seek to instigate tension between them and others like them, with the ultimate aim of having them at one another's throats. In especially dangerous forums, introduce outlandish and irrelevant stories and theories in the most eloquent and organized manner possible, preferably in a breathless and histrionic tone, to aid in the dissipation of energies, and waste valuable time and cumulative intellectual effort. This serves both to exhaust and depress the contributors as a whole, as well as increase their skepticism in the future towards all real communications of merit.
An even more powerful tactic is to work with others with the same ultimate goal of hopelessly muddying the waters. Praise these allies whenever you can get away with doing so, and attack their foes. Collaborate with them on places like Voat (with the pizzagate investigation, for example) to begin serious investigations of every false lead. Do everything in your power to manuever yourself or your allies into 'mod' roles, to further dominate the discussion. It's now a well-known fact that there are teams paid to collaborate in exactly this manner.
Finally, the coup de grace in the technological age, the final terrifying aspect of this that virtually nobody yet recognizes the implications of: Make full use of informational databases and AI bots, to first determine the personality/nature of your target(s) algorithmically, and finally orient your contributions for optimal psychological affect accordingly. This one is difficult to explain to those not familiar with the power of predictive algorithms, but I strongly suggest looking into these topics, and thinking about them more deeply. . . this is the path towards complete mind control, on both macro and micro levels. Let's say google/facebook/twitter/etc have algorithmically detected that Jeff is beginning to show an interest in researching the scourge of pedophilia at the highest levels of media/finance/politics. Let's further say that Jeff's internet viewing and purchasing habits have contributed to a personality profile that marks Jeff out as a Christian, and an individual with a deep distrust of conventional media. A SHIMS-devoted individual or algorithm driven bot then whirrs into action, after Jeff's next youtube comment, or reddit post, or voat contribution, responding with a blurb indicating full alliance with Jeff's ideas, though perhaps solely emphasizing the role of the Catholic church in such crimes, and framing this as the information the conventional press doesn't want you to see, perhaps even claiming that the bible isn't specifically opposed to such behavior. Jeff is now internally conflicted on some deep level: he carries onward in his research, but his energy is blunted, and his black and white moral clarity is now gone, and he'll be somewhat less likely to take an active/confident role in investigations and contributions in the future. These tactics might not just be aimed at Jeff, but even more effectively at the cumulative psychological profile and personality type of the forum/discussion/thread as a whole.
This is just one ineloquent example to illustrate that point that databases, disinformation experts, algorithms and bots are increasingly dominating our cultural landscape without our knowing it. Meta-narratives are being subtly implanted into forums/discussions to derail or confuse them, to sap their energy or blunt their forward inertia. SHIMS can now occur in a fully automated manner, with greater and greater efficacy as we move forward in time, to the extent that 99% of the time such behavior will not be noticed by any but the most obsessively observant eyes. To those who think that such things aren't being done, with so much at stake (trillions of dollars in the obscenely corrupt economic structure the swamp has developed), I'd ask you to think more deeply. Those completely unchained by moral/ethic/virtue are capable of anything, and their every action becomes a utilitarian means to an end, and in this case the 'end' is control.
For too long the upright and honest have, naturally, viewed the rest of the world as if it were wired similarly to themselves, which has the unpleasant side-effect of making them completely incapable of recognizing the depths of dishonesty and degeneracy on the other side. This has to stop... time is short, we no longer have the luxury of naivete, as our very future (and that of our children) hangs in the balance.
Long story short, suppression of truly free and independent speech is a very serious threat. The control of speech and discussions on a macro level, via algorithmically precise manipulation and shepherding, is a far greater threat. SHIMS can take a pure unpolluted stream of communication, populated by genuine individuals with love in their hearts seeking clarity and solutions, and so hopelessly muddy and muddle the waters as to absolutely destroy any hopes of something fruitful resulting as an end result.
As someone who has worked in the field of predictive algorithms for years, I recognize their power, their implications, and the staggering threat they pose, in the wrong hands. At present, beyond any shadow of a doubt, the most powerful algorithms in the world are in very wrong hands, being used for almost exclusively nefarious purposes, while simultaneously creating windfall profits for the same cabal using them to shape cultural narratives.
The only solution is to begin establishing controlled forums and discussions, wherever and whenever possible, which are invitation only, and make use of intelligent reputation-scoring mechanisms. I strongly believe that the most valuable places in the cyberspace world at present are the last few remaining pure and undiluted streams of thought and discussion, and they're disappearing with such depressing rapidity that I felt compelled to post this immediately.
I'm working on a solution of my own in this regard, a truly free self-governing environment that instead of seeking quantity of membership instead seeks quality, and uses every machination possible to keep SHIMS practitioners at bay, locked out. . . harnessing advanced algorithms solely for the purposes of facilitating real communing and communication, as opposed to profiteering or manipulation. Those that have some technical expertise and would like to assist in developing the framework, please feel free to contact me. Your contributions would have to be pro bono, until/if we decide to create a donation and funding mechanism in the future (which I'm strongly considering, as this is just the first step of several I'd like to take over the coming months). . . though my hope and expectation is that this single important step shouldn't be an enormously difficult one.
More than anything else, I wanted to get this perspective, these ideas, out into the public consciousness. I think we all recognize these threats, on some level. . but virtually none of us (including myself) are yet fully cognizant of the extent of them, the end-result ramifications of a database containing exhaustive personality profiles on every last one of us being used to subtly manipulate us in countless inperceptible ways via social media, news, advertising, etc. This is 1984 on steroids, and its a world we need to fight against with all our collective might. . . if not for our own sake, than for that of future generations.