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?

  • Hemingways_Shotgun
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    1 day ago

    Because as long as they have us convinced that’s it’s “left vs right” than we won’t be unified enough to fight the real war, which is “Corporations vs the rest of us”.

  • djsoren19@yiffit.net
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    Because leftist shitposting online doesn’t actually lead to anything, and providing us with a safe outlet for our frustrations serves to keep people apathetic and afraid to fight back.

    Even if such a thing like total social media control were possible, and you’re posting this on a leftist decentralized social media platform so the premise is already false, they just have no reason to take any action. What would be more likely is they would have bots and shills trying to keep content more “rah rah CEO bad” and less “The CEO of Anthem BlueCross BlueShield lives in Indianapolis, Indiana, a state well known for their incredibly lax gun laws.”

  • makyo@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    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?

  • stoy@lemmy.zip
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    2 days ago

    They have zero reason to stop it, it is that simple.

    Remember that online plattforms earn money through ads and engagement.

    If the last decade has shown us anything it is that online plattforms thrive on division.

  • Im on mobile so sorry for the basic link and typos. May clean it up later.

    TLDR Mike Masnick has long worked out it is impossible (even with AI) to do content moderation of large social media well. Bad content (nazi rhetoric, Christian nationalism, islamist terrorists signaling each other, CSAM, human trafficking, penis pill ads, auto warranty extensions and so on.)

    So left wing rhetoric will still get through. And far left rhetoric and embarrassing coverage of the elite (e.g. couch fucking) will become popular.

    So bring it!

  • CmdrShepard42@lemm.ee
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    2 days ago

    Sudden wide-spread crackdowns lead to a lot of backlash. Corporations aren’t going to do this because there’s no legitimate benefit to them for doing it. Additionally, the left-wing gets very little representation in the US at least so why stoke anger and resentment when the right is already controlling everything?

  • spacecadet@lemm.ee
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    2 days ago

    Isn’t this exactly what happened to the right? They were kicked off of Reddit and Twitter so they started Truth social? Then Elon bought Twitter and it has being less moderated.

    • GreenKnight23@lemmy.world
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      2 days ago

      Then Elon bought Twitter and it has being less moderated.

      didn’t someone recently share a screenshot from there where Muskrat was promoting his “free speech” and someone was silenced for literally saying, “transgender”?

    • orcrist@lemm.ee
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      I wouldn’t say it’s been less moderated, but rather moderated differently.

  • wizardbeard@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    2 days ago

    If only life were so simple. There’s a warehouse full of reasons.

    • Why should they care as long as it’s just talk? Sites on the open internet that truly pose a threat in regards to organizing coordinated action to effect the powers that be do get attacked and taken down, regardless of political affiliation. It’s not about politics, it’s about protecting the money and power.

    • Threats are easier to track, and organized movements are easier to infiltrate/disrupt, the more visible they are. Why would they choose to push anything they’re concerned about deeper into places that are harder to track like private IRC, Signal, dark web, etc?

    • General plan of attack as documented in leaked intelligence agency docs, is to infiltrate potential threats, manipulate to discourage direct action and to divide the group with an ever increasing list of concerns until they’re spread too thin for action, then cause loss of momentum and or trust in leadership, then finally destroy if there’s any reason to (usually the movements disperse and die on their own at this point). Look into Occupy Wallstreet and how it was derailed by introducing intersectionality into what was originally a clearly targeted movement based purely on class division.

    • Controlled opposition is useful as hell. They can use their own resources to more easily influence groups when the groups are out in the open.

    • Obvious direct censorship action tends to spur people to action, vs careful manipulation to ensure the pot doesn’t boil over.

    • You can make money off of all sides and discussions when you own the discussion sites, get to harvest all the data, and get to sell all the ads.

    • Things are not nearly as centralized as you imply, and even getting all the big names and powers in line and coordinated to do anything in one fell swoop is nearly impossible. Systemic issues are difficult because it’s not one source of rules and truth passing commands down, it’s tons and tons of people effected by rules and expectations from all over the place, which collectively congeal together to cause the shit end results.

    • reksas@sopuli.xyz
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      2 days ago

      #3 I wonder if this strategy could be somewhat attacked by staging online groups that seem like they should be infiltrated. Try to waste their time and make them doubt.

  • frezik@midwest.social
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    2 days ago

    They wouldn’t take the opportunity because what you lay out would require large scale cooperation of people who work at cross purposes. The GOP in Congress can’t even pass a funding bill that Dear Leader supported without it being a crisis. They are not that united.

  • aesthelete@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    It’s impossible to censor everything on the Internet. You can make it more difficult to access stuff you don’t want people to see but it’s ultimately impossible to block it all for everyone.

    • Valmond@lemmy.world
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      Exact. It’s wildly more effective to make believe its bad and dangerous so people will police themselves away from it.

  • bobs_monkey@lemm.ee
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    2 days ago

    Sure they could do that with centralized social media as long as the respective owners are on board, but with the wider internet as a whole it’s not that easy. I’m sure someone that’s more knowledgeable can expand on this, but you’re talking about first identifying all of the sites/domains that need to be blocked (assuming more don’t pop up while you’re tabulating), and then getting every ISP and search provider in the country to simultaneously kill those hostnames in their DNS registers. You’d still have to coerce overseas operators to do the same, or block traffic out of the country (good luck because a, business require international communication, and b, many US based providers serve those outside the US).

    Sure they could (and probably will) do some shenanigans to severely cripple our means of fighting back, but like piracy, this is the internet; we always find a way around their bullshit.

    • j4k3@lemmy.world
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      2 days ago

      Searching for information is the primary bottleneck. Search engines are not deterministic any more. That means individual targeting is already being done.

      It is a good time to learn about Libreboot, Tails, Tor, and the dark web. A white list firewall is a pain, but not impossible. The pcWRT stuff might be an option for an easier OpenWRT setup if you find it challenging.

      All of this is what Stallman was trying to stop in the first place. Everyone needs to do this stuff too, especially if you have nothing to hide and nothing to lose. By being part of the noise, you are enabling/anonymizing those that are willing and able to take action.

  • sp3ctr4l@lemmy.zip
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    2 days ago

    Wanna really decentralize the internet?

    Learn and use I2P.

    Oversimplified: Its a backbone for an internet based off of a p2p, torrent like framework.

    • themadcodger@kbin.earth
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      2 days ago

      I’ve tried a few times, and I like the concept, but it was just too slow to run and there didn’t seem to be enough on it to make it useful yet.

      kinda like Lemmy before Reddit did it’s thing

    • GreenKnight23@lemmy.world
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      I thought that protocol sounded familiar. been around since 2002.

      based on java stack…

      anything that keeps java relevant is a no go for me. sorry not sorry.

  • orcrist@lemm.ee
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    2 days ago

    Mainly because you forgot about the rest of the world. In whatever country you’re thinking of, corporations could try that, and then anyone who was hosted abroad would still be online and everyone could just go access them.

    The other point is that corporations compete against each other. Sometimes they will work together in order to screw over the general public, but they will also work against each other to make an extra buck. That unity that you think exists on the right, it actually doesn’t.