The only thing scarier than government censorship is...

This is my very first post on Steemit (and maybe the only one). I was reading some news articles and I felt the rage, disgust and to some extent, fear building up inside of me. I have to get it out and make my opinion known. I really don't care if you are Democrat or Republican, Conservative or Progressive, Atheist or Christian... There are some things that should give you pause about what is happening in the United States and the rest of the world. This is just one of them.

Today, I read that Apple, Facebook and YouTube (which makes Google a party to this) banned Alex Jones from their platforms. I don't have all the details, so I'm not going to write about that. What I am going to write about are general principles.

To make one thing perfectly clear, I don't really care what Alex Jones has to say. I have listened to him and for reasons all my own, I have decided to simply ignore him. It doesn't matter why. It is simply my choice and my opinion, and opinions should never be confused with fact, even if they do agree on any single point. So, whatever my reason, it makes no difference to anyone else, since their opinion will surely be completely different.

What is important is that I would never in a million years deem my opinion to be so correct, that I would deny him his opinion or deny the opinions of others that agree with him. That is what happened today. Several corporations, on the same day apparently, decided to ban him from their services. At a time when the word "collusion" is on everyone's lips with respect to Donald Trump, it seems very possibly evident that collusion is in play with this act of censorship against Alex Jones. A corporation has every right to decide how their company is run. But, what if these corporations start by being open to everyone, and allow anyone to take part whilst they weave themselves into the fabric of our lives and they then start changing the rules to fit their own ideologies after this interweaving has occurred?

I have often said that the best thing about the internet is that it gives everyone an equal voice and that the worst thing about the internet is that it gives EVERYONE an equal voice. Well, the internet is still free and open to everyone. But, some of the largest companies in the world seem to have banded together to decide that some voices should be silenced for the good of all. This is possible because these companies control the vast majority of information flow on the internet. When you sit down at the computer, where do you start looking, watching and reading? Google, YouTube, Facebook and iTunes have become the "staples" of the internet and are the first places that many people visit. Almost unbelievably, Twitter has NOT jumped on the bandwagon... not yet, anyway. Personally, I neither want or need their help in deciding who I will, or won't, listen to. Neither should you.

We, as a group, have built these companies into the behemoths that they have become. It started off innocently enough. They made our lives easier and more enjoyable. We could search the internet easier. We could listen to podcasts. We could speak with our friends and find new ones, at our leisure. But, then they took control of our data and made our lives their own property. They constantly changed their "terms of service", which we didn't read anyway. One day, some of us realized that we didn't own our own thoughts anymore, at least not the ones that we had put on our social media. They will argue that they don't really own them. Practically speaking, they have a sort of "power of attorney" in their ability to use your data as they see fit, since you gave it to them willingly and under their terms. (I'm not an attorney and I'm using the term as an illustration, so please don't bust my chops for legal accuracy).

They watched us with a zeal that any government, with the possible exception of China, could never even hope to duplicate. First, they just watched to see where we went on the internet. Then, they watched what we bought. They even scanned our email to see what we were talking about. They started making lists of who we knew and began the process of linking them all together. Imagine "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon" on steroids and using supercomputers. With the advent of smartphones, they followed us out of our houses and found out where we go, how we got there, who we meet and can tell with pretty good accuracy where we open our car doors for even a quick stop. In effect, they know us. They know our lives. They have the capability to know everything that we speak, type on a keyboard or hear from others. They didn't fight for it or take it from us. We gave it to them willingly, even if in some cases, unknowingly. We bought devices that listen for us constantly. But, few of us consider the fact that, in order to hear the words "Alexa" or "OK, Google" or "Siri", it has to be listening ALL THE TIME AND TO EVERY WORD AND SOUND. All of the apps on our phones have "permissions" that tell us what they can and cannot do. But, while these permissions are certainly enforced on those that write the apps, can we guarantee that they are enforced on those that wrote the operating systems, such as Google and Apple? I don't know the answer to this question and I doubt that anyone can make that guarantee with full authority. When you write the operating system, you make the rules by which others are governed. It stands to reason that you are not NECESSARILY governed by those rules. In any case, few of us are equipped to look at the code for ourselves, in order to ascertain the answer.

They gave some back to "the people" by enriching their lives and wallets. They "allowed" us to invest in them, gave us services for "free" and lower prices for the things that we bought. They even sent our "stuff" straight to our doorsteps so that we didn't have to leave the house to get it. They only asked for our data. But, it turns out that our data is worth much more to them, than it is to us.

Now, the tables have turned.

They are no longer content with watching us. They have watched us long enough and some of what we do or say disturbs them. I'm sure that some things disturb a lot of us. But, they now believe that they not only have the right, but the duty, to protect us from ourselves.

Over the 50+ years that I've been on this Earth, I have watched personal responsibility erode to the low levels that we see all around us. Many people take no blame for their mistakes, while quickly taking credit for their successes. We live in a world where failure happens often, but it seems to be "nobodys" fault. An old cartoon called "Family Circus" even had a character called "Nobody" that was responsible for all of the mistakes of the children in the family. Nobody did it. Now, the major players in social media have decided that we are all children and have to be guided accordingly. We can't be allowed to make our own mistakes. We just don't have the intelligence, common sense, or "call it what you will" to decide who or what we should and should not listen to. We can't be trusted to make up own minds, because that will lead to people making more mistakes. That can't be allowed.

IT MUST BE ALLOWED. One of the greatest mistakes that one can ever make is to decide that "I am so correct, I can't allow anyone else to be wrong". We are seeing this happen more and more often. It goes without saying that, as a flawed human being, you will make mistakes. We've been doing it since time began. We will do it tomorrow and the day after that. Who knows? I may wake up tomorrow and discover that Alex Jones was right about everything he ever said. I doubt it. But, could it happen? If I have learned anything, it's that I have very little success in predicting the future, even one day ahead. On September 10th, 2001, I and everyone I knew, everyone I listened to and everyone I respected went to bed and didn't have an inkling of what was going to happen the next day. If they did, they weren't talking about it or giving me a heads up. So, if I can't see something that big, one day in the future, what are the chances that I can foretell the little things? None. Zero. Zilch. Nada.

But, I can recognize the signs of the times. I can judge our present by our past. History really does have a way of repeating itself. We can see many of the times over the centuries that governments have tried to control what their populations see, hear and do. But, to the greater extent, those have always been relatively isolated events in a country, region or bloc and at least in the past and to a greater extent, they have all failed. Even in China, where the control of the internet is almost absolute, the dissidents have still found ways to get their thoughts online. This time is different, though. These corporations have a global influence and that is troubling. What they don't have is equally troubling. They don't have any responsibility for their actions. They think (and want us to think) they do. They act like they do. They want to pretend that they do. They want to believe (and want us to believe) that they are doing the right thing. They want to believe (and want us to believe) that they are protecting us. But, the truth is that they "may" protect us once, twice or three times. But, it won't last. They will make a mistake and cause us harm. They are human, after all.

People always make mistakes and we sometimes might forget that corporations are made up of people just like us. The collective mind is not better than a single mind. If anything, the collective mind can make the same mistake as an individual, especially when all of the individuals in the collective are of "like mind". When I, as an individual, make a mistake, it usually inflicts damage on my self and possibly on those around me. If my mistake affects others, and it is severe enough, society will demand that I be held accountable for my mistake. In some cases, I suppose I could even affect the entire world although I don't think that has ever happened in my own life and probably never will. When a company or group of companies that hold the data and secrets of the entire world make a mistake, it might seem as though it only affects a certain portion of us. But, it can easily affect all of us. Can they or will they accept the consequences for their mistake? History shows that corporations accept responsibility for their actions, for the most part, when acceptance is forced on them by a judge or a government. Only rarely do they accept responsibility because of "the people". If society as a whole must be brought to bear in order to hold them accountable, how is this affected by the fact that they now know everything about us? Could we be susceptible to being blackmailed, overtly or covertly, into submission by the idea that they have access to our innermost thoughts and actions? We think that so much of our data is private and out of reach, hidden deep in the servers of enormous data centers. But, if one of us becomes a "problem" for them, how out of reach is it, when they have the keys to the data center?

I like to take thoughts to the logical extreme and evaluate not just how a decision affects myself and others, but how it could affect me in a slightly different scenario and what would happen if the slippery slope were followed to its logical conclusion, and this is where I end up...

Silencing Alex Jones makes very little difference to me. I don't watch or listen to him. I don't read his writings. If I open a link and see that it is Prison Planet or Infowars, I usually just close it without reading. There's a lot of thought, research and opinion that went into that decision on my part. So, while you are free to question it, I am really not open to discussing it. It is simply the decision that I made for myself. Your mileage may vary and I encourage you to make up your own mind and let me have my own opinion in peace. I begrudge no one for listening to him and doing what they will with the information that they get from him. As with all things, time will tell if that action is wise or if it is not. Perhaps it might be a mix of good and bad. But, the main gist of what I am getting at, is that the silencing of Alex Jones on the world stage has no direct impact on my daily life, at least not this moment.

What happens if the scenario slightly changes? They've decided that I shouldn't hear from someone with whom I disagree. But, what if it is someone or a group that I hold in high regard? I am not the arbiter of truth and neither are they. What if they should decide that CNN, Fox News or MSNBC is the more trustworthy? What if they decide that the Huffington Post is more trustworthy than Matt Drudge? What if they decide that AllRecipes.com has better food than Epicurious.com? Should I get medical advice from this site or that one? Maybe I shouldn't be allowed any advice on medical matters? Maybe only recipes deemed healthy should be allowed? By silencing one voice, we remove a certain amount of discourse, some of which might be valuable. But, how many times have we been told that "this" was bad for us, only to be told years later that it was wrong? How many times has the government apologized for something they initially denied ever happened in the first place? If you've never really thought about it, here's some food for thought:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unethical_human_experimentation_in_the_United_States

Opinions are very fluid things. They are not formed in a moment, but over the course of a lifetime of experience. They are constantly changing as new information is received and are affected by social norms as well. I look back on writings that I made 30 years ago and am left with the feeling that my entire worldview has changed over the course of that 30 years. Then I see 20 year olds that think they've got the world figured out. They don't. Neither do I, even at the ripe old age of 50-something. But, neither do the governments and corporations. Even with all of their resources and some of the best and brightest minds on the planet, they are no better at predicting the future than we are. Remember that "they" are us and just like us. It only takes a single event to change our entire worldview on any given subject. This has been shown many times. In the years to come, we might just look on this single day as the beginning of the end for whatever happens next. Although we are no good at predicting the future, I am of the opinion that what comes after this, if it is allowed to stand, will only get worse.

Finally, we reach almost the end of the slippery slope. What if these companies start willingly taking direction from a government or group that they happen to align with on ideology? What happens if they have an alignment forced upon them? Suddenly, all of our data (our lives) are at the beck and call of that government. With great power comes great responsibility and I question if there is anyone (or group) in the entire world that should have this great power, simply because so few accept the responsibility that comes with it and because so often I seem to be at odds with what is now considered acceptable. Even if that power were placed in the hands of the "most honorable person in the world", what happens when the baton is passed on to the next person? Will that one be as honorable? We have got to stop living in the here and now and at least try to see the future possibilities. In "Jurassic Park", Jeff Goldblum's character said "We got so caught up in asking whether or not we could, we forgot to ask whether or not we should" (or something like that). While I hesitate to use a movie quote as a guide, the statement is not without merit. Sometimes, it is better to err on the side of caution and simply not play the game. Change is not inherently bad, nor is it inherently good. Any technology can be used for good or for evil. Whether it is good or evil is not always immediately apparent. It does not escape my notice that Google just recently removed "Don't be evil" from their published code of conduct. I don't believe that they have changed their motto to "Be evil" or anything like that. But, I do question why they removed it. Is it because they thought it to be quaint? Perhaps they have decided that evil doesn't really exist at all. It sounds ridiculous to me, but based on other things I've seen lately, it certainly could be the case. The real truth is that I just don't know why they took it out.

So, what is the answer? Just as opinions vary, so do solutions. But, those solutions are not (yet) out of our grasp. The answer for one might not be the answer for another. Each of our situations is different. Each one of us has different needs, wants, capabilities and resources. But, it should be a goal for all of us to take back our lives, while it is still possible. In fact, I think I should qualify that statement. In the end, it will always be possible. What differs is the amount of strife and conflict that will come from doing it now, as opposed to doing it later. We could wait until it reaches the point where it affects all of us. But, when that time comes, it will be much more difficult to extricate them from our lives.

I recently spent quite a bit of time investigating what it would take to completely remove Google (just as an example) from my life and came away amazed at how difficult it would be. Not impossible, but very difficult. Of course, I could've taken the easy way and shut off my internet and threw away my phone. But, that's not the point. Google, Facebook, Apple and all the rest have a worth. But, that worth is not that which we are giving them. They are not worth our lives. If we allow them to silence one voice, all voices are at risk. This might well be a test case for them. Take out someone that many disagree with and see how the rest react. With that knowledge, it will be even easier next time. This is not a conspiracy theory. I am not saying that this is what they are doing. I am saying that this is how I would do it, if I were so inclined. Is it so unbelievable? We, as a people, should not be silent in the face of this. If we are silent now, we could be silenced later. Whether you agree with Jones or not, your voice could be the next.

One other random anecdote that might be of interest is that I recently switched to satellite internet and discovered that my internet usage was much higher than I might have anticipated. With satellite internet, you usually have data caps on how much you can use at full speed. After you use all of it, they throttle your service (the data doesn't transfer as quickly). Most people, using DSL, cable or especially fiber, have no idea how much data actually goes through their service. It doesn't matter. You don't get charged for the amount. Most of your concern is with how fast it is transferred. But, on satellite, it matters and you are able to track your usage, to keep it under control and at full speed. When we first switched from DSL to satellite, we saw that our usage was much higher than we imagined, even when we weren't using it. I finally tracked it down to one device... Chromecast. It was using up to 10 gigabytes a month, even when we weren't using it. Some of this was due to it downloading background pictures while it just sat there, not being used for anything else. But, in truth, I wasn't able to discern what else it was downloading OR UPLOADING. It has full access to the network and "can" do anything it wants with data that is not encrypted within our network. No one has been able to satisfy my curiosity when it comes to explaining exactly what it does and does not do. So, now it sits unplugged and unused on my desk. That's not because I think it was doing something bad. But, I can't justify its usage of 10 gigabytes per month when all I seem to get out of it is a pretty background picture.

As I said earlier, my record for predicting the future is nil. It might even be worse than random chance. But, as I do have history to look back on (at least for now, as so many are trying to rewrite it), I don't see how this will end well for any of us. These corporations have decided that it is not enough that we feed them our data. Now, they want to CONTROL what we feed our minds and what decisions we make. They are just people, just like us and prone to mistakes, just like us. Some mistakes are just a nuisance and easily corrected. Some have more consequences and are harder to fix. It stands to reason that some are simply not reversible. Just as an example, logical extremes dictate that if you somehow discover a way to control the world and then proceed through your own ignorance to make the world uninhabitable, it is irreversible since everyone is dead. We're not quite there yet, obviously.

I also said in the beginning that I didn't care if you were an atheist or a Christian (or Hindu, agnostic, Muslim, anarchist, et al). I do think that there is one thing we can all agree on and that there is no human being on this planet that we could ALL agree to call a god. Having a group of people in a corporation to call god is no better. If these corporations are colluding in their silencing of Alex Jones, who will join them next? While I think it very doubtful that they would team up with the current U.S. administration to any great degree (unless it suits their purpose), what about the next admin or the one after that? What about other governments around the world? As the virus called censorship spreads, there may well come a time when it becomes almost impossible to reverse its effects. We might even be looking at the beginning of a new "Dark Age". We will still have a lot of information on the internet. But, how many ideas will never see the light of day, just because someone didn't think it was important or accurate? Years ago, a doctor stood up before his fellow doctors at a conference and announced that he believed that h. pylori (a bacteria) was responsible for most ulcers and that it could be treated with antibiotics. He was met with ridicule, because EVERYONE KNEW that ulcers were caused by stress, excessive acid, etc. After years of further research, he was proven correct. What if he were silenced? Where would we be? That is just one example. But, any idea that goes against the norm is at risk, with the events that transpired today.

Even if the internet has become a vast wasteland of misinformation, I do not put my faith in people, corporations or government to correct it. I rely on my own discernment to decide what sources of information that I will accept. People have been making their own decisions, right or wrong, for millennia. It is only now that a system is in place to take that prerogative away from everyone on the planet... if we let them. Most importantly, if this virus is allowed to fester and grow while you happen to agree with it, what will you do when the time comes that it disagrees with you? Will you so willingly accept the will of others?

It will be difficult for each individual to extricate themselves from this morass, if they choose to do so now. It will be harder if they choose to do it later. But, it is possible. I don't have an answer for everyone. I don't even have a fully solidified answer for myself. But, I am going to be working on it. If I don't, it's only going to get worse for me. Of that, I am certain. As I've grown up, I've seen things that I thought were improbable or even impossible. I remember asking who would've thought that the USSR, as big as it was, could fall in such a short time? On a more benign note, I didn't think Compact Discs would take off the way that they did. Of course, in the long term, they are beginning to disappear as well, as we generate so much data, so quickly, that they just can't hold it all. The one thing that I am afraid to lose is freedom, because it is almost never regained without bloodshed. Alex Jones had a bit of his freedom taken away today and it was taken by the very people that he helped build up. That's right. Alex Jones has a huge following and a great number of people hang on to his every word. Google, Apple and Facebook took all of the revenue he generated for them with his following, and then when it became politically or ideologically unacceptable to have him around, they silenced his voice. Many might think that the world is a better place with him gone. I disagree. I wonder who these "gods" of data might choose next? To be sure, Alex hasn't been banned from the internet. But, it goes back to the tree falling in the forest... if it falls and no one can hear it, does it make a sound? While I think that to be a silly philosophical argument, I think the more important question to ask is whether we want these companies deciding if we are ALLOWED to hear the tree fall? The fact of the matter is that Alex Jones is just as important to this world as I am. He is just as important as you are. If he is not, then none of us are important at all. If we are not important, then we don't matter. If we don't matter, then it doesn't matter what they do to us. If it doesn't matter what they do to us... Well, we're not quite there, yet. There is still time to reverse course on this.

The chances are good that no one will read this. That's ok. I just wanted a place to put my thoughts and to get them out of my head. I probably would've put it up on Facebook, but I left them a year or so ago. If you did read to the end, thank you. If you agree in full, with part of it, or with none of it, that's ok. It's just my rant... the outlet for my frustration. I apologize in advance for not being a better and more coherent writer. It wasn't meant to be this long or to go off on so many rabbit trails. As I re-read it, even I have a hard time following my thoughts. But, that's just the way that it poured out. I'm not a novelist or an activist or a teacher. I'm just a regular guy. We each have our strengths and weaknesses and I'm just me and this is what I was thinking about. If enough people don't like this post, it will probably disappear at some point. But, those that read it and knew that it was here, might just wonder if I took it down or if some corporation decided that my voice shouldn't be heard, for whatever reason.

Time will tell.

Edited to add: I forgot to finish the title of the post: The only thing scarier than government censorship is... corporate censorship on a massive level with no accountability.

The US government has a Constitution in place that makes it more difficult (but not impossible, in the current climate) for the government to silence its critics or those with whom it disagrees. There is nothing currently in place that prevents corporations, especially the largest ones that have the largest repositories of data, from deeming certain voices to be unacceptable for consumption on the internet at large. In other words, as a corporation, they can decide to prevent anything from being broadcast from their platform with which they disagree. This started covertly as "shadow banning", but is now out in the open. There was a time that these same companies decried ANY attempt at censorship... while they were still growing, finding their way and becoming profitable. Censorship seems now to be acceptable, since THEY are the ones deciding what flies and what doesn't. It almost feels like a "bait and switch" to me.

What began as...
"Come in! Give us your data! Tell us what you want! We'll give it to you!"
Has become...
"You don't want that. You want this. Don't like it? Get out!"

Except that there is nowhere left to go. Their competitors have all been bought up or run out of business. My wife just told me that she heard Pinterest has just banned Alex Jones, but we haven't vetted that yet. I guess I can Google it to find out.