I’ve been thinking of potential measures that corporate-controlled authoritarian governments could use against any kind of left-wing information or organizing, and it seems like an obvious one is a sudden, widespread crackdown on left-wing content. In practice, social media companies would collude with the government to:
- Wipe out all left-wing social media profiles and ban left-wing rhetoric under the justification that it is “terrorism-related content”.
- Block access to thousands of left-wing sites at once and de-list them from search engines
- Update content moderation algorithms to prevent more of this content from being published or recommended
- Do all of these on the same day to cause the most disorientation and fear
- Continually go after the hosts of the niche left-wing news and communication channels that still remain, such as small websites, fediverse instances, and encrypted communication channels. Throw their operators in prison and make examples out of them
In effect, due to the centralized nature of social media and news, the online left could instantly be scattered through the collusion of just a few large corporations.
It would:
- Galvanize the populist right-wing base
- Stoke feelings of fear, isolation, and hopelessness among the opposition, deterring action
- Weaken the left’s ability to organize
- Make it harder for people to learn about real left-wing ideas and stances
Why wouldn’t they take that opportunity?
The bulk of online left-wing activity could instantly be wiped out in a single day. Why am I not hearing more people talking about that? Why do so many left-leaning people think sites like BlueSky will save them? Do they really think they are resisting by using centralized social media platforms? The corporatocracy has complete control over all of the infrastructure…
In my opinion, every influencer on the left should be screaming from the rooftops every single day that the most productive thing you can be doing is talking to people, building connections, and organizing in the real world, because our platform on the Internet could vanish instantaneously.
Anyway, I hope I’m wrong, but it feels like something that could easily happen. What are your thoughts?
I think it’s because it’s not even remotely on their radar. They’re fighting a class war and obliterating an opponent that barely knows its fighting. Meanwhile the rest of us are doing a really really good job at dividing ourselves up for them and making their job exponentially easier.
They love that we’ve bought into the whole left vs. right idea hook line and sinker, what they couldn’t have counted on is how we continued to divide ourselves into smaller and smaller circles that refuse to play with each other.
Why would they bother silence us when the best we can muster is a bunch of memes and squabbling?