In previous reports on internet censorship, we received numerous comments and emails expressing a need for a directory such as Winston84. Here it is.
By Edward Ring
“And if all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed—if all records told the same tale—then the lie passed into history and became truth.”
— Winston Smith in Nineteen Eighty-Four
This week the Center for American Greatness is pleased to announce a new resource for lovers of the First Amendment. A searchable directory—Winston84—to online content that has been censored.
The phenomenon of online censorship, which has steadily increased over the past few years, hardly requires explanation. Beginning in earnest in 2016, the censorship disproportionately impacts conservatives and nationalists, who find their social media content “shadowbanned,” “deboosted,” “throttled down,” “demonetized,” or, in the ultimate (and very common) sanction, “deplatformed.” All too often, these content providers even have their websites taken down by their ISP providers, and their online fundraising accounts terminated.
For those of us paying attention, these attacks by online communications monopolies have been unrelenting, but the censorship has reached new extremes. Last week, Twitter made it impossible to post a link to an article about content potentially embarrassing to candidate Joe Biden, published by one of the oldest newspapers in America. Meanwhile, Facebook and Twitter have now censored social media accounts belonging to the Trump reelection campaign 65 times.
The recent wave of censorship goes well beyond presidential politics.
In just the last two weeks, YouTube, following similar actions by Facebook and Twitter, deleted more than 30 channels with significant audiences which they identified as posting “Qanon conspiracy theories,” along with countless smaller channels. But the real threat posed by the Q collective is not just its most sensational and controversial topics, but rather the relentless uncovering of government corruption by thousands of online sleuths. The suppression of Q is one of the most ominous displays of censorship in our time.
Over the summer, we saw blatant censorship of doctors who merely advocated more research and access to hydroxychloroquine as a preventive and early-stage treatment for COVID-19. Does HCQ work in certain cases? We still don’t know. But censoring public debate on this question is wrong.
For example, a video featuring emergency room doctors who offered a dissident opinion from mainstream media and big pharma got over 17 million views within a matter of hours, before Facebook pulled it from its platform. President Trump’s retweet of this video was taken down by Twitter, along with those of other high-profile Americans, including Donald Trump, Jr.
Describing these events, one of America’s last remaining unmuzzled mainstream dissidents, Tucker Carlson, had this to say on July 29: “While the rest of us were sleeping, or in the case of so many of our senators, taking money from Google, a tiny number of left-wing corporations took virtually complete control of all news and information in this country.”….Read More