Guest Post: Meta – A Public Town Square Or A Space For Absolute Censorship?
Meta has long been on a spiralling decline with its exceptionally tattered history and proven inadequacy as a public town square. Sure, Mark Zuckerberg is good at Jiu-Jitsu – bravo – but that doesn’t change much about his platform’s deeply unethical behaviour.
On Monday July 3rd my website was censored by Meta platforms.
All links to the blog were removed from Facebook for supposedly going against ‘community standards’, though no explanation was provided.
Despite reaching out to FB staff for additional information (perhaps it was a mistake) or potential recourse, no further information was provided. The same thing happened on Instagram.
Last week, Meta also deleted a long-form pinned post (since 2022) wherein I discussed central bank digital currencies, among other things, and speculated as to how they may come about.
This is both proactive and retroactive censorship, and speaks to the decedent state of our supposed public town squares.
For what it’s worth, this is hardly surprising.
In the early days of the Covid-19 lockdown hysteria (and all associated shenanigans which I won’t get into), social media censors were hard at work completely removing one side of the public debate.
Fast forward one or two years and much of what people like myself warned about has been totally and utterly vindicated.
At the time, Meta ensured that its users had limited access to these debates, which meant that FB users couldn’t be properly informed.
Now, it appears that a similar situation is unfolding, only the censors are apparently emboldened. See, failing your mission statement is not a cause for self-reflection for this lot, but a reason to double and treble down.
Two plus two equals five. Following the riots in France last week, Meta reportedly hired an additional 1,000 censors at the behest of EU Commissioner Thierry Breton because social media platforms ‘aren’t censoring enough’.
It all took place as Meta launched its Twitter competitor, Threads, which began censoring people from day one, and includes a laundry list of privacy encroachments that violate every privacy law under the sun.
It looks like Meta has become synonymous with censorship.
If it’s mildly gritty, politically charged, argumentative or otherwise, the sole arbiters of truth and goodness may take issue with your post(s). And with the EU’s crackdown on so-called ‘disinformation’, Meta appears keen on cementing its position as a barren digital wasteland.
That said, I’d like to suggest that both our individual and collective priorities need to be re-examined from the ground up.
Thankfully, this renegotiation is already taking place at a grass-roots level. Decentralised social media is coming at lightning speed.
There’s a growing alliance between power users and the powerless.
Both cohorts are converging rapidly. Power users are the first through the door – showing the powerless that it’s possible, which brings more people into the fold. This circular feedback resulted in the creation of Nostr; a censorship resistant base layer for tomorrow’s online communications that is independent of public-private coercion.
While it saddens me to speak this way about a once-beloved platform, I’m under no illusion that the status quo – which is a public-private cabal for all intents and purposes – will likely continue censoring and shouting down dissent instead of allowing free and open debate to sort things out on their own merits – like decent people deserve and expect.
For now, it’s worth pointing out that just like with the unmistakably incorrect, draconian and half-baked covid-19 measures of the 2020s, which some galaxy brains still promote, you cannot comply your way out of tyranny.
Left unchecked, digital communications under such a strict regime will slowly become unbearable as the status quo consolidates more ‘power’ over fewer and fewer people.
Alienating and censoring others because of disagreements is incompatible with Internet values and open networks. A return to normality is sorely needed. In the meantime, you can find me on Twitter and Nostr.
Christopher is interested in technologies that enable individual freedom. He writes about bitcoin and cryptocurrencies primarily but has a keen interest in fundamental constitutional liberties. You can follow Chris on Twitter and Nostr, or reach out to him at [email protected].
What do you make of Meta’s ever-expanding grasp?