Continual Censorship has Eroded Democracy

Internet censorship, we once thought, was confined to authoritarian or autocratic regimes. However, now in what most people still think of as a democratic society, we have normalised the internet censorship that has been increasingly enforced upon us.

We are desensitised to it, even turning a blind eye only last week when YouTube introduced a newly updated “medical misinformation policy.” This policy will censor any medical or health-related content, not limited to COVID-19, that does not align with claims coming from the unelected World Health Organization. Can we really say we live in a democracy?

We Are The Many

Since the early 1990s and the advent of the World Wide Web, along with decreasing costs of computing devices, Internet technologies have become available to average citizens in some nations around the world.

Nowadays, media influences that once belonged to printed media, television, and radio, have been surpassed by the internet which has become an essential element in most of our lives since the 2000s. As a result, more people can communicate worldwide in near real-time over various mediums and protocols. The internet has enabled the shift that now more than ever, we are the many.

As “the many” we have “unfettered electronic communication that allows truth to be uncoupled from power” and according to Warf, “While it is widely celebrated for its emancipatory potential, many governments view the Internet with alarm and have attempted to limit access or to control its contents” (source).

Autocratic Internet Censorship

Many nation-states have been known to impose censorship on their country’s Internet communications, Additionally, private sector organisations might also implement censorship measures on their users, or be compelled by their governments to do so, we tend to associate this level of control with autocratic societies.

In fact, we accept it as commonplace, and it is true a repertoire of censorship techniques to control online communication is a common feature in autocracies and autocratic governments control where and when modern communication technology (ICT) is introduced in the first place, who gets access to it, and what information is communicated.

Of course, this is politically motivated, and the autocratic governments rely on their control over the internet to ban opposition activists from mobilizing their followers online, to contain the spread of information that is critical of the regime, or to spy on the population to identify potential dissenters. depending on the respective political situation on the ground. 

The obvious example is, the censoring of online content by the Chinese government which is deemed unacceptable to us.

The People’s Republic of China was among the first to adopt national filtering systems at the backbone of the country’s Internet—popularly known as the ‘‘Great Firewall of China’’—and it has become a paradigm of Internet censorship ever since. (source).

According to a political science review, China has a censorship programme aimed at “curtailing collective action by silencing comments that, represent, reinforce, or spur social mobilization, regardless of content and is oriented toward attempting to forestall collective activities that are occurring now or may occur in the future—and, as such, seem to clearly expose government intent.“

Not In Our Democracy

Yes, but we are a democracy and up until the elections, primarily, in the UK between Corbyn and Johnson, (2019) and in the United States, between Trump and Hilary Clinton, (2016) internet censorship and manipulation, were not associated with occurring in democracies. We, the masses in the “democratic” Western world, find censorship and media manipulation unacceptable when it is elsewhere, yet many seem to turn a blind eye to it when it is right on our doorstep.

According to research Access Controlled, from 2010, there was “coyness on the part of many states to admit seeking to control Internet content. In many cases, denial of access occurred extralegally, or under the guise of opaque national security laws.” Often, according to the report, ISPs were simply asked or told to block access to specific content without any reference
to existing law. Other times, blockages were difficult to distinguish from network errors or other technical problems, like denial of service attacks, but seemed suspiciously connected to political events.

States No Longer Fear Pariah Status

They also revealed that many of the countries actually denied that they were in fact blocking access to Internet content or had any connection to attacks on services.

“We saw these events as anomalies insofar as they did not fit the paradigm of Chinese style filtering and largely eluded the methodologies that we had developed to test for Internet censorship.” Nevertheless, they say, “these anomalies were, in fact, “emerging norms,” adding that “Since our research for Access Denied was conducted, a sea change has occurred in the policies and practices of Internet controls. States no longer fear pariah status by openly declaring their intent to regulate and control cyberspace.”

Maybe because the majority of us do not seem to care? Why is it not unacceptable when it is happening to us? Although we may say we do, collectively in practice we seem to be turning a blind eye to the internet surveillance and censorship that has been creeping up on us for years.

It is now “a new normative terrain in which surveillance and censorship are routine” argues the researchers from Access Controlled, “Internet filtering, censorship of Web content, and online surveillance are increasing in scale, scope, and sophistication around the world, in democratic countries as well as in authoritarian states,” they argue.

The Accessed Controlled team highlighted back in 2010 that “Paradoxically, advanced democratic states within the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE)—including members of the European Union (EU)—are (perhaps unintentionally) leading the way toward the establishment of a global norm around filtering of political content.“ These days, there is no doubt that it is intentional.

COVID Misinformation Policy

We are seeing this right in front of our faces, particularly since 2020, YouTube banned any COVID-related content that directly contradicted World Health Organization (WHO) advice and said that it would remove anything it deemed “medically unsubstantiated”. Chief executive Susan Wojcicki said the media giant wanted to stamp out “misinformation on the platform” adding “So people saying, ‘Take vitamin C, take turmeric, we’ll cure you,’ those are the examples of things that would be a violation of our policy,” she told CNN.“ In fact, anything that would go against World Health Organization Covid recommendations or claims would be a violation of their policy.

(Correct me if I’m wrong, but were we not hearing “take vitamin D. Ivermectin, Quercitin, etc.?” Can the chief executive not even bring herself to say these words? Or maybe she did not hear them, due to her censoring them.)

Anyway, YouTube has clearly felt comfortable suppressing our freedom of expression and only last week expanded their censorship policies which are not limited to COVID or related content such as COVID vaccines either. Now the YouTube misinformation policy applies to all health and medical content including the use of treatments from apricot kernels to the promotion of Ivermectin.

The Medical Misinformation Policy

Essentially, if the World Health Organisation(WHO) and their governing unelected bureaucrats in Geneva, Switzerland deem our home remedies to be untrue, then we are no longer able to share our knowledge in a YouTube video to contradict them.

The original YouTube Covid misinformation policy is no longer available on the site. It has now been replaced with the far more general Medical Misinformation Policy. This policy means we can no longer post content that either denies or contradicts any health condition, that the WHO and the local health authorities may be pushing, nor can we offer advice on how to prevent or treat those conditions.

With policy updates and guidance from the WHO, being subject to change on a Tedros whim, as we know from 2020 onwards, this means that YouTube misinformation policies will also be subject to alterations in order to stay in alignment with them. Therefore, there may be a need for content providers to continually check for these changes.

Prevention, Treatment, and Denial Misinformation

In the event that a content provider accepts the medical condition that the WHO/YouTube is touting, they must not recommend treatments or preventions of their own even if they feel they have been of great benefit to themselves or others. YouTube states

“We do not allow content that promotes information that contradicts health authority guidance on the prevention or transmission of specific health conditions, or on the safety, efficacy or ingredients of currently approved and administered vaccines“ This of course, now means any vaccine and not solely the Covid mRNA.

While home remedies may not be for everyone, the WHO has taken away our choice to learn about them on YouTube and decide that for ourselves. Their policies do not just apply to videos either, they even deny us the right to use the information in video descriptions, live streams, or comments.

(source). YouTube, is just one example of the newly expanded censorship policies, It is happening all over the internet, (Google, and the X platform this week).

Source

Today, we face a grave challenge. Censorship, both by private entities and public institutions, has emerged as a menacing threat to our democratic ideals. When powerful forces control and manipulate the flow of information, they undermine the very essence of our democracy.” writes Richard Gerber

Digital and social media do offer important tools for social movements, activists, and state critics, they enable a worldwide connection to others, allowing the exchange of views resulting in a wiser and stronger force to fight against corrupt agendas. Essentially we are causing the WHO et al a huge problem.

That said, digital and social media tools also benefit governing bodies due to the substantial avenues for expanding state surveillance and suppression of our voices. According to research, quite simply “autocrats make systematic use of digital tools and interfere with online communication to contain challenges to their rule.”

We can no longer argue that “state-sanctioned Internet censorship” is confined to authoritarian or autocratic regimes such as China unless we are ready to admit that we too are under authoritarian rule. Continual Censorship is eroding our democracy.

It is not hidden from public view, Internet censorship has become a global norm and as was said of the Chinese censorship, the deliberate silencing of the people is “oriented toward attempting to forestall collective activities that are occurring now or may occur in the future—and, as such, seem to clearly expose government intent.”

The intent, of the WHO, enabled by the digital tools provided by YouTube among others, is to steer the masses into cooperation and compliance by using the threat of a “medical emergency” as a trojan horse to sneak in tyrannical one-world governance. They do not want dissenting voices getting in the way!