The KGB Oracle Forums General Public Discussion (SPECIAL ACCESS) KGB Political Debate Central Is the left eating itself?

Must we wait until disaster strikes before we start working on a solution? While there is no financial monopoly, there is an effective ideological conglomerate - Facebook, Google, and Twitter. These companies are very culturally monolithic (Californian Democrats) and happens to belong to a part of society that in recent years initiated slide into illiberality. For example, if most of decisions makers at these companies believe that speech is violence and that certain ideas must not be expressed, how could we hope to maintain freedom of speech for everyone?



Yes, I agree. However, effective ideological monopoly can be exerted by closely ideologically aligned entities.



This isn't a bad solution. Especially if it also touches payment processors. However, what if social media is a natural monopoly? Google+ failure indicates that this might be the case.



I would normally be in agreement with you except for three recent events:

- A prominent neo-nazi website, Stormfront, had its domain registration yanked. That is, registrars colluded to shut it down over objectionable speech.

- Robert Spencer was banned by Mastercard, making it impossible for him to accept payments. This is likely connected to the southern poverty law center blacklisting him. The same was done to Maaji Nawaz, with SPLC settling for $3+ mil.

- Alex Jones was deplatformed and banned by all tech companies, including Apple.

While all of these banned people/organizations deserve a healthy dose of criticism, their fate demonstrate that there is willingness and ability to effectively censor.

This tells me that there is too much market capture by ideological left in tech... and this is why I think censorship is a serious actual, and not just future potential, problem.