Censorship for your own good — Twitter versus RT and Sputnik

© 2017 Peter Free

 

26 October 2017

 

 

"Y'all be so stupid, we'uns gotta protect ya"

 

Twitter Public Policy announced today that:

 

 

Twitter has made the policy decision to off-board advertising from all accounts owned by Russia Today (RT) and Sputnik, effective immediately.

 

This decision was based on the retrospective work we've been doing around the 2016 U.S. election and the U.S. intelligence community’s conclusion that both RT and Sputnik attempted to interfere with the election on behalf of the Russian government.

 

We did not come to this decision lightly, and are taking this step now as part of our ongoing commitment to help protect the integrity of the user experience on Twitter.

 

© 2017 Twitter PublicPolicy, Announcement: RT and Sputnik Advertising, blog.twitter.com (26 October 2017) (paragraph split)

 

 

"Retrospective work we've been doing" — actually means hopping on the Group Think Train

 

Recall the proof-lacking "Russia did it" BS that American intelligence agencies said they came up with after their girl, Hillary, lost the 2016 presidential election to the Orange Pufferoo.

 

Not surprisingly, no evidence has been offered since then that:

 

 

(a) the Russians actually did meddle

 

or that

 

(b) their interference was successful,

 

or that

 

(c) RT and Sputnik are more propagandist in nature than the American media themselves are.

 

 

Nevertheless, the "Russians fingered the goodies" fable continues to gain momentum.

 

Much of the US population has collectively inserted its empty (but patriotic) head up its voluminously filled colonic out-tube — in preference to thinking about real issues.

 

 

Note

 

Historian William Blum took a thoughtfully sarcastic shot at this proctological (head up the butt) phenomenon here.

 

My own (more concerned) geopolitical take is here.

 

 

Why does this matter?

 

The more insulated we are from other peoples' opinions, the more likely we are to be both grossly ignorant and combatively intolerant.

 

The arguments for free speech are the same as those against censorship.

 

Knowing our alleged enemies — as Sun Tzu advised that warriors should — would require knowing what they think. That's impossible, when we start shutting off their means of communicating with us.

 

 

The moral? — It is a cowardly, petty-minded population that censors other people's perspectives

 

It is also laughably hypocritical to sift RT and Sputnik out from among the world's media as being somehow worse than our own Mainstream Media. Most of our media outlets outdo Goebbels in their effort to support whatever self-serving (warmongering, racist, plutocratic) propaganda line the American Establishment is foisting that day.

 

If we want to worry about something significant, let's put our attention on the fact that societally unprincipled corporations will be soon controlling everything that gets onto the Internet.

 

We can reasonably call that mind control. Who will benefit?