Why I Disagree With The Strategy Of Exiting Facebook, Twitter And YouTube

in #socialmedia7 years ago (edited)

Earlier this month Ben Swann, an important voice for whom I have nothing but respect, expressed a sentiment in one of his excellent Reality Check videos that I'm seeing more and more in anti-establishment circles, and I happen to strongly disagree with it.

In a presentation titled "Internet Purge of Dissenting Voices?" on the recent increase in censorship of anti-establishment voices by large social media corporations, Swann said the following:

"The problem for any dissenting voice is that if you are using your voice on someone else’s property, i.e., YouTube or Facebook, you will never have control of it. Which is why the next frontier must be decentralized platforms. Platforms like Dtube and Steemit, built on blockchain, will be future of how content, the good the bad and ugly, will be stored. And the efforts to silence dissenting voices, will actually be the undoing of YouTube and Facebook."

I disagree not with Swann's endorsement of decentralized platforms like Dtube and Steemit (which are both excellent and essential weapons in our revolution against the establishment oppression machine), but with Swann's assertion that the social media giants' censorship of dissenting voices will be their undoing. It will not.

“2017 was a strong year for Facebook, but it was also a hard one," said Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg last month. "In 2018, we’re focused on making sure Facebook isn’t just fun to use, but also good for people’s well-being and for society. We’re doing this by encouraging meaningful connections between people rather than passive consumption of content. Already last quarter, we made changes to show fewer viral videos to make sure people’s time is well spent. In total, we made changes that reduced time spent on Facebook by roughly 50 million hours every day."

Two questions:
(1) Does this sound like normal corporate talk to you? A corporation deliberately decreasing its advertising revenue for the benefit of "people's well-being and society"?
(2) Does anyone honestly believe that Mark Zuckerberg has ever once in his life cared about "people's well-being and society?"

Fast Company reports that time spent on Facebook is down a whopping 24 percent in a tone that seems to be warning that the company is in trouble, but Zuckerberg is actually publicly boasting about the loss and how beneficial it is for mankind. Not only has he drastically slashed his viewership, surely at great expense, but he's also massively increased his overhead, hiring an extra 14,000 people to help fight "fake news", which is expected to have risen to 20,000 by year's end.

What kind of corporation does that? What kind of multibillion dollar corporation slashes its own profits that drastically without being legally compelled to, and does it for the good of "people's well-being and society"?

These questions make it clear that we are looking at two possibilities here:
(1) That a Silicon Valley tech plutocrat, who censors the speech of political dissidents and hoards tens of billions of dollars while the poor starve, honestly cares about "encouraging meaningful connections" and being "good for people's well-being and society" so much that he would slash his own profits to make that happen.
Or,
(2) This isn't about helping people, and it isn't about money. This is about marginalizing dissident voices as part of Silicon Valley's extensive and well-documented alliance with the national security state.

Millionaires think in terms of money and profit. Billionaires think in terms of power and dominance. Zuckerberg isn't filtering non-mainstream media off of Facebook for the good of society, and he isn't doing it for money either. He's doing it because he is an oligarch in the borderless new empire, and it is in the empire's interest that dissident voices be silenced.

Silicon Valley is so intertwined with the agendas of intelligence and defense agencies that it's gone beyond being used for surveillance and propaganda, and we now see things like Google straight up building AI for the Pentagon's drone program. In an environment wherein money translates directly into political power, it's impossible to grow beyond a certain size without learning to collaborate with existing power structures. Defense and intelligence agencies are the biggest enforcers of existing power structures in the new empire, and they will either empower you or your competition based on how willing you are to collaborate with them.

My point with all this is that the few clear-eyed rebels are not going to kill Facebook, Youtube and Twitter by marginalizing themselves into the fragmented fringe of alternative social media outlets like Steemit, Dtube, Gab, Minds, MeWe, etc. That's exactly what these bastards want. They want us far away from their mainstream livestock. They want us to exit into some fringe circle that they will then invent a name for and smear as the place where all the kooks go. All of a sudden you'll see all the mass media outlets simultaneously start using that label ("fringe conspiracy sites", "fringe media", who knows) in a derogatory and dismissive way, and from then on their herd will be immunized from our influence.

We should absolutely be expanding into new social media platforms (MeWe is an especially pleasant and collaborative site right now due to the current absence of pro-establishment disruptors), but we need to be engaging the mainstream as well, because they will not follow us. If Facebook can absorb a 24 percent dip that it caused by its own actions, then it can absorb the far smaller group of anti-establishment activists who would exit it as well.

I know it's intensely creepy that these Silicon Valley corporations are being used to gather information on us. I know it's incredibly frustrating to watch them strangle our numbers further and further into marginalization. But the reason they are fighting so hard to wedge us out of their mainstream platforms is because they want us out. Saying "Okay, well if you don't want us here, we'll leave!" is not a punishment, it's a reward.

We need alternative social media platforms to enable us to talk to one another, but we need mainstream social media platforms to enable us to convey information to the mainstream as well. The empire is happy to have all of its dissidents marginalized into a small fringe group that it can then paint over with smear campaigns; what jams the gears of the propaganda machine is counter-narratives being shown to mainstream westerners.

Contrary to what the ideology of libertarians like Ben Swann would lead you to conclude, this isn't a problem that the free market can sort out, because this is not a free market. The scales are being heavily weighted toward the social media outlets which collaborate most extensively with the interests of the empire, and that is where the mainstream population is going to remain for the foreseeable future. We cannot shut them down by exiting and taking some small amount of ad revenue away from them, but we can frustrate them so much that they are forced to expose their ham-fisted totalitarianism more and more.

By taking the revolution deep into the guts of Facebook, Twitter and Youtube, we can force them to either allow us to speak or become more and more totalitarian with their censorship, until they are forced to reveal to mainstream America just what kind of beasts they really are. Either way, we'd be making it harder for them instead of doing their job for them by marginalizing ourselves.

The mainstream will not follow us if we exit mainstream platforms into tiny websites most people don't even know exist. The average American isn't going to say "Hmm, I've noticed there's a disappointing lack of anti-imperialist ideas in my news feed, maybe I should go check out that Twitter imitation with the frog logo?" They're going to stay right where the propagandists want them. So since we can't pull them out, we've got to go in after them.

Noam Chomsky said that the smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum, and that's exactly what the propagandists are engineering with their censorship practices on Facebook, Twitter, and Google/Youtube. The only thing on the menu in cable news is an extremely heated ongoing debate ranging from the corporatist Orwellian warmongering neoliberalism of MSNBC to the corporatist Orwellian warmongering neoliberalism of Fox News, and they want that debate to be happening on mainstream online discourse as well.

As long as we refuse to leave mainstream social media circles, it's like they've got Rachel Maddow and Sean Hannity telling everyone what to think, and a bunch of fiery-eyed rebels keep storming the studio and kicking over their desks.

Stay where they don't want us to the extent that you are capable, please. If you've left, go back in. Go back in and shine as bright as you can, attracting as many followers as possible and telling as much truth as you can get away with. Don't leave until they drag you out kicking and screaming.


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I agree with both sides of the argument. You are both right for different reasons. We definitely need alternative platforms, otherwise you will have no voice. However, there will also be a 'Brave New World' effect in action, where people will be separated into different 'online classes'. The cool hip online human species, and then the sub-human online species in the dark corners of the web who talk about weird shit. The labels will come thick and fast, from the mainstream who will eventually dominate YouTube and other social media giants, as a mainstream news service.

Has anyone tried to quantify the words and actions of news platforms to determine precisely which of these corporations are the worst offenders and by how much?

There has to be organized data that will help us see hidden influences and motivations. If there isn't we have to start collecting it.

We need a lense of truth and perspective to help us filter the Internet. Such a lense would allow us to see clearly how organizations and authors have been influenced. We would know exactly which content was biased and in what way.

What if we could use their own tricks against them? Data and content are powerful. We need to get it and use it.

nothing to do with this thread...you just gave me an upvote - thanks mate, I appreciate it ..

but never upvote anything older than 6 days - no one benefits - no one gets anything from it. (your voting power used, for no reason)
...just letting you know matey!

But thanks again for the vote of positiveness!

I feel the question is if I can still use the authoritarian #deatheconomyfeeder platforms without me helping them profit from my engagement. For example, I won't click on many story links, like WAPO and NYT, and I haven't ordered anything on amaciazon for probably 5 years.

I havent used gmail in years either, and prefer paying for a quality, secure email client than g(ulag) mail.

I also almost never directly share link, preferring to copy and paste and often delete redirect data from the links too if they get copied!

Sure these efforts have essentially zero impact on those companies. But I sleep better at night knowing my karma (actions) are not too entangled with these monstrosities.

If journalists want to click on Wapo, go for it. I will wait and let you all tell me about their latest sordid authoritarian project.

The reason MZ can still post a profit from failing business earnings is because his company is subsidized by usgov banana republic opaque funds, just like Bezos!

I'm afraid you are wrong, @caitlinjohnstone. You can't destroy matrix from the inside. If you do “take the revolution deep into the guts of Facebook, Twitter and Youtube” and become relevant, you will hit the wall of censorship. The best way is to leave all of that abruptly, immediately, and forever.

Everyone who wants to be a slave of centralized media, deserves it.

I still would say stay in there and convince listeners to leave. keep your account as placeholder.
Once everyone has gone then reconsider if it is still worth to stay.
The thing with leaving right now is that you loose your voice in a time where your voice actually counts.
If all journalists leave abruptly that is a clear message, but viewers may see that in a wrong way.
The viewers should leave the platform first as a sign that THEY give up on bullshit. But with all those cat video's I doubt that that will happen. New children enter the maze every single day to look at the same cat video's.

Tricky one...

The thing with leaving right now is that you loose your voice in a time where your voice actually counts.

The thing is that you do not have a voice in a CENSORED SURVEILLANCE UNIT!

JA Fb - 2018-03-25_090922.jpg

https://twitter.com/JulianAssange/status/977324471215378432

JulianAssange Julian Assange ⌛ tweeted @ 23 Mar 2018 - 23:21 UTC

I have deleted my Facebook.

In fact, I never had one. Friends don't put their friends into a giant intelligence d… twitter.com/i/web/status/9…

Disclaimer: I am just a bot trying to be helpful.

I hear that deleted accounts tend to be reanimated there, and that people need to delete accounts over and over again, and never really get deleted. But merely flagged and made 'invisible'. The data never leaves the servers.
This also happened when Facebook bought Whatsapp. People who then opted out were also just flagged and disabled and not deleted. Back then it was a big issue that made it into dutch parilament. Yet a few years later the state started to work together with whatsapp and now even does free marketing for whatsapp by placing 'neigborhood watch / whatsapp signs' As the government chose Whatsapp as a nationwide system to rat on neighbours. And cause more conflicts then to provide actual solutions.

That i agree with, yet when you leave the platform then you no longer have the evidence of the bullshit they do personally to you.

So I agree to partially disagree. I see your point yet I agree more with Caitlin on thisone.

Maybe it would be worth to try both options at once

All leave Facebook and all focus on youtube. And then see what works best?

when you leave the platform then you no longer have the evidence of the bullshit they do personally to you.

When you leave the platform, you don't need to know about it any more. They are harvesting activity data. They can use (and sell) only the data from the last month. Older than that is predominantly unusable.

Whenever you @bifilarcoil, or @caitlinjohnstone, or anyone else log in there, YOU ARE FEEDING THE BEAST! Can't you see that?

We sure see that, but the issue is like this:
When a hand full of good journalist leave the beast, and all the sheep stay with the beast, then they are dogfood...

It seems best to have the journalsist aroound until such platforms are a bit more obsolete. As in no longer a danger to humanity.

Don't get me / us (if i mas say us?) wrong @lighteye we sure agree with you on the general thread. Yet it is a bit more complicated. We need a good strategy. And that may be different again tomorrow depending on new beachheads and fallen bridges.... I hope you can also see how that works?

BTW I don't have a Farcebook or Tweety account, and i'm not planning on going there either.

It's better to stay in the stomach and make the beast sick so it eats less sheep, then being crapped out and let the beast feed on sheep like nothing has happened.

Meanwhile I do very much appriciate your concerns @lighteye. I'm on the same side as you.

@bifilarcoil

I didn't leave,they just totally blocked me.So what now?

sue them for discrimination?

Well said, CJ. I agree with the idea that FB is working for - and being subsidized by - the establishment in order to purge some of my favorite content :) I'm a countercultural curator and an artist and I left FB because I'm tired of having my attention and my content monetized for someone other than me and my peers. That said, I'm using my own blog and Twitter and YouTube to share posts and my own content from Steemit and I've already got people asking questions about platforms like DTube and Steemit. They are set up to spread our memes and it's important to show our brothers and sisters that there are alternatives to garbage like FB. Keep up the good fight!

Still reeling from that savage hit piece on Lee Camp a few weeks ago at the hands of Scott Simon of NPR. I wrote to them and complained. I feel sort of the same way about NPR as your article does about fb, Google, Apple, et al. For awhile I tuned it out, just let them choke on their prestige and misinformation and false equivalencies. Then I realized how much of a reach they still have, into every media market in the country and beyond. All those places with limited broadband and nothing left in the commercial radio realm. So it pays dividends over time to still be writing to them and paying attention to what's being said on their air.

By the way,no offense to MeWe,but you can't compare a centralized system with paid packages to Steemit! Seriously....

wow - you've really made me think about your approach to flooding these mainstream platforms with more "alternative" news articles and ways of thinking.. I really liked this point you made:

That's exactly what these bastards want. They want us far away from their mainstream livestock. They want us to exit into some fringe circle that they will then invent a name for and smear as the place where all the kooks go. All of a sudden you'll see all the mass media outlets simultaneously start using that label ("fringe conspiracy sites", "fringe media", who knows) in a derogatory and dismissive way, and from then on their herd will be immunized from our influence.

This is a giant beast to take on though - my main concern with these oligarchs and the MSM social media sites is the collection of data for asocial crediting system by which us speaking out more and more on their controlled social sites will confirm our "score" as an undesirable and if we are not a strong majority before this happens we will easily be weeded out completely and blacklisted.. I know this may sound a bit frantic but I feel like this smart-grid and social crediting cloud is looming over us free thinkers and many people are missing it.
I'm all for flooding MS social media with more truths but lets make sure we are not just putting targets on our backs and waiting for the net to close on us all.. if we are not a large population this could easily happen.
I love your post and blog though - I'm following you now :)

It's one hell of a beast to tackle. It will only diminish if more platforms come as alternatives. Google may die under it's own weight when ad money runs out. And when tax money stops feeding from the other end. But that needs more educated voters.
Once people vote for less surveillance then all those State Security (StaSi / Staats-Sicherheit) people also need to find a new job... What company has use for people with obsolete skills?
Re-educating those expensive people is also expensive. People should consider to write scenario articles about all of this and slowly figure out what options work best.

The landscape needs to be changed somehow. Mainstream media has shown us they are not the best people for the job, they are just as self serving as the people they are kissing up to.

Once the people in power loose power, then the ones who are now kissing up will nolonger be usefull to them. and it will all come apart. The up-kissers will try to kiss sideways and come with all kinds of excuses to try make themselves relevant again. And the sheep who still sleep will be slaughtered by them.

The more people who see reality the less will become victim to the bullshitters.

something like that... As there is much more at play when the foundation of Babylon crumbles down.

100% @bifilarcoil

As there is much more at play when the foundation of Babylon crumbles down.

how true our main concern should be making sure we're outta the way and safely positioned when the tower falls.. but people would rather sit around and argue or speculate about the poor construction and which cracks should be plastered up first LOL it's a senseless approach to problem solving

It's an interesting problem though. Average joe is sucked in by the monster leech, and unaware of the 'magic spell' And the harder we try to make them see the harder they ignore us. Pre-conditioned reaction...

I recently discovered (with steemit posts) that people only understand MONEY.
They experience MONEY as 'their freedom' yet they fail to see that MONEY is their ENSLAVEMENT.
That said i now see that they clamp to every fake promise of bullshit politicians.
They want the money, money is food, food is another day of life... More money, more food, more fake-freedom.

But how to make them aware that money is the very thing that keeps eating away their REAL freedom?

And we indeed need to hack the core. And quit to patch bleeding wounds that are being kicked open day after day.

oh yeah major global system failure #1 - pay to live economic enslavement

people really need to open their eyes and start asking why the fuck we must pay to live on this planet, pay for food that grows freely, pay for freedom.. when currency in itself is fiat.. what a scam! It's mind boggling how we even got into this cycle but now it seems too far gone - slavery is ingrained into our DNA now

You hit the nail on the head! We need to find a way to let the 1% pay us for not launching them into deep space.

That's a complete and utter waste of time though, instead of moving on from the carcas that FB is going to stake your claim isn't going to be any different than anywhere else: they can still marginalize you and call you a kook simply because you associate with us, or simply because they can and do either way. Why do you care if they want to create an Echo Chamber Grandiose, that place is a lost cause. Don't cast your pearls before swine for they will be righteous in trampling you over for doing that.

It's not a complete waste of time when you keep making people in the belly of the beast aware of ne and better options. The more people become aware the sooner things can change.
Yet when walking away then you leave those people in the belly of the beast behind. Who will make them aware? Do we leave them to their own devices? Thats not a nice thing to do right?

Educate them, and once EVERYONE is informed, then we can move that mountain.

Together

Who will make them aware? Aware of what exactly? Whats the crucial information that everyone is waiting for that is stopping us from this business of mountain moving?

Thats why we need the Journalists to stay there. Even with a small reach there at least is some reach. Once this shit gets worse, and it will, then word of mouth will still work and reach more people.

We need to tell everyone about everything that we are already aware of and they are not.

How long did it take for you to have all the awareness that you have right now?

That's a good indication how long it will take them to get to the same level as you are right now.

We all need patience, endurance and the courage to carry on. Move this mountain, or die wile sitting next to it.

I like to move it move it..

MOVE IT !

The point is that there's not magical information that will free people, or make them aware. You want to reach the low hanging fruit, not the one that has yet to turn colour. How can you have a conversation when you can only discuss certain things, or where the enviroment it counter to that, you're essentially going against the graind and you won't get anything but splinters.

That why journalists need to stay put, and inform as many people as they can.

One at a time. Just like I inform you and keep informing you, just as long as it takes.
I can only hope you see the light..

Then splinters it will be.

We'll get there as long as we don't give up on eachother. If we leave the sleepers behind then we have lost, as they will keep dreaming when there nolonger are journalists around who try to wake them up.

I hope i get my messagage accross. And that you can try to see why Cait is trying so hard to make you see. And me even harder right here right now. I'm greatfull to have this discussion with you, and I'm well aware that you care just as much as I do. Yet Cait is seeing the bigger picture more clearly. And she is way better informed then me.

There are A passing back and fort of information but it's got no meaning, so it's meaningless. Journalists don't wake people up, they share some news. What will people be more aware of? Choices that they have no influence over and things that are outside their control? Why torment those poor people with the fact that these controlers are relentless, can you see that 2/3 vote by not voting, the only mandate that exists? You cannot rush the fruit to Fruit.

Now it is time to get your head out of the dark place. Without journalists we now would be in the middle of a Hillarious Clintonian World War III

You want them to see what? What they are already well aware of but cannot affect anything against? I appreciate the dialogue, but you are having it here not only because Facebook is dead, but it is happening because of some people (looks at caitlin) who think that Facebook isn't dead. Facebook died the moment I left Facebook, I and others leaving directly caused dialogue to cease and move to other places, and that echo-chamber, the carcas that once was, can and should rot, as is natural.

Now you contradict yourself a bit. If Farcebook is already dead then why would it matter at all to be or not to be there? Then we would not be having a discussion right now.