has anyone else started realizing just how censored the mainstream internet is?

[Gender: Xenomorph]

It's obvious what happened, they panicked and scrambled because all of a sudden certain left wing beliefs started to be called into question, their attempts at burying certain right wing beliefs only makes those beliefs seem more valid, not less, I'd be much more skeptical if this was like it was a decade ago, but when there's certain things they REALLY don't want you to say or believe well it must be for good reason.

It's not fear, it's all a calculated assault. Pretty sure these bastards sat down in a fancy hotel after Trump got elected and decided this cannot happen again. They revised their strategy and went on full offense. They never were under any threat. They upped their game cause they can and there's nobody to stop them.

you know whats interesting about this? no matter what they tried, they failed anyway.
conspiracy theories were historically thought of by people considered fringe. by trying to purge it from google, its back to being fringe again. they didnt stop conspiracies, they pushed it back to where it was.
even then, conspiracy theorist back in the day didnt have platforms like duckduckgo, twitter, facebook, instagram and all the alt video platforms and social media platforms. conspriacys still travel 1000x faster than they ever could back in the 70s. so the only thing they accomplished is slowing it down slightly.

They didn't fail. They're the strongest than they've ever been. Whether it's you getting shadowbanned for saying bad stuff about the Chinese, or if you got banned for posting in an anti-vaxxer subreddit, it's still happening.

Thing is... I can't really pinpoint the end game here. Is it ad revenue? It can't be that simple. Information control for the sake of information control makes no sense either. They don't push the globohomo to push a righteous agenda, that's television drama bullshit. A lot of NGOs get money from anonymous trillionaires to push globohomo, so there's a lot of money to go around.

I know there's a push to control people's money, and parallel there's a push to identify people online... Are they trying to make a slave caste over which they have full control (opinion, money) so they can live like kings while other slave away? Unlikely. Is this pursuit as trivial and shallow as wealth and fame? What is clear is that there's a global entity that is trying to disempower our governments and is using globohomo to do so.

There's a lot of money to be made, and a lot of it is illegal, hence the NFT push. They need a way to wash it. But where is the money coming from?

What if there's some spirit or afterlife, or supernatural resource they are trying to gain monopoly over? Or there's a alien/galactic civilization they are trying to impress? But this is just my 3 am conspiracy theory ramblings. Take with a grain of salt.

 

[Jimmy Olsen]

The internet is filled with oppressive censorship and surveillance. In other news, water is wet and Chris Chan fucked his mother.

 

[Dom Cruise]

It's not fear, it's all a calculated assault. Pretty sure these bastards sat down in a fancy hotel after Trump got elected and decided this cannot happen again. They revised their strategy and went on full offense. They never were under any threat. They upped their game cause they can and there's nobody to stop them.

They are afraid of losing their power though.

They didn't fail. They're the strongest than they've ever been. Whether it's you getting shadowbanned for saying bad stuff about the Chinese, or if you got banned for posting in an anti-vaxxer subreddit, it's still happening.

Thing is... I can't really pinpoint the end game here. Is it ad revenue? It can't be that simple. Information control for the sake of information control makes no sense either. They don't push the globohomo to push a righteous agenda, that's television drama bullshit. A lot of NGOs get money from anonymous trillionaires to push globohomo, so there's a lot of money to go around.

I know there's a push to control people's money, and parallel there's a push to identify people online... Are they trying to make a slave caste over which they have full control (opinion, money) so they can live like kings while other slave away? Unlikely. Is this pursuit as trivial and shallow as wealth and fame? What is clear is that there's a global entity that is trying to disempower our governments and is using globohomo to do so.

There's a lot of money to be made, and a lot of it is illegal, hence the NFT push. They need a way to wash it. But where is the money coming from?

What if there's some spirit or afterlife, or supernatural resource they are trying to gain monopoly over? Or there's a alien/galactic civilization they are trying to impress? But this is just my 3 am conspiracy theory ramblings. Take with a grain of salt.

The endgame is complete and total domination of the human race, to where there would not be a single independent thought in your head.

If you want to get into freaky conspiracy theory territory as to why this is so desirable for them well, here we go, but I think there's this occult belief that if you could control the entirety of humanity's thought you could literally "hack" reality itself, ie if you decree the sky is green, not blue and everyone was forced to truly believe that the sky would literally turn green, in other words they have the desire to literally become God.

That's why in 1984 it was so important for Winston to truly believe the guy was holding up 5 fingers when he was holding up 4, not just say what he wanted to hear.

The internet is filled with oppressive censorship and surveillance. In other news, water is wet and Chris Chan fucked his mother.

Remember when it used to be literally the exact opposite though?

 

[ToroidalBoat]

I’ve been on the internet since the late 90s and noticed how “mainstream friendly” the internet became around 2010-2012.

That's when "smartphone zombies" started being a thing.

 

[Jarch6]

The other thing I've noticed is search engines are getting worse at just finding useful information in general (often irrelevant FAGMAN links, autogenerated reposts, and sites totally bloated with javascript come up). Random forums and useful little HTML blogs are hard to come by. It's why I find Null's efforts here admirable.

 

[ToroidalBoat]

search engines are getting worse

there's a whole thread about that in the tech forum:

Has search gotten worse? | Kiwi Farms

 

[Fliddaroonie]

You know the saying the winners write history, that was easy to do when there was no 'instant communication' networks, it's harder to do in the world we now live in, not impossible, just harder.

In the context of the above, I'm guessing you don't know about how 'they' change the spelling of words, or change the words entirely, to manipulate what information can be found and linked together?

Example is global warming and climate change.

Years ago there were quite a few websites that had all the old weather charts from decades ago, and they would then do comparisons with the 'new' old weather charts, where the information has been manipulated, under the guise of 'oh but the technology is better able to measure shit'. How that means that the readings taken back then were incorrect and needed changing is beyond me, but I'm just a dummy that thinks 'they know it all'...anyway, these websites were foundations of information without the political manipulation that we see on all websites that have to do with the subject. So they changed it to climate change, and boom, that is what everyone now searches for, and no one searches for global warming, hence that information is no longer coming up, AND can no longer be put in people's faces to wake them up to the reality of the agenda.

As an aside on that topic, some of the websites do still exist, some have changed over to new formats, they are still very difficult to find, and often are stumbled over when you least expect it.

So anyway, the changing of spelling, and meanings, isn't always as simple as 'get woke go broke', when they say 'g and co' control the information highway, they truly mean it in a literal sense.

It's why talking to 'old people' is actually more important now than ever, to find the links you need to know the old terms.

It's also why 'ARCHIVE EVERYTHING' is a thing

See also racism and vaccines. Used to be racism was being a cunt to anyone a different color to you and a vaccine stopped you getting a thing and passing it on.

 

[Gender: Xenomorph]

They are afraid of losing their power though.


The endgame is complete and total domination of the human race, to where there would not be a single independent thought in your head.

If you want to get into freaky conspiracy theory territory as to why this is so desirable for them well, here we go, but I think there's this occult belief that if you could control the entirety of humanity's thought you could literally "hack" reality itself, ie if you decree the sky is green, not blue and everyone was forced to truly believe that the sky would literally turn green, in other words they have the desire to literally become God.

That's why in 1984 it was so important for Winston to truly believe the guy was holding up 5 fingers when he was holding up 4, not just say what he wanted to hear.

No I don't think it was fear. I think the time was right.

But you can see how the whole vaccine/antivax thing is to filter out the 'uncontrollables'. But I don't think they can hack reality in that sense. They can rewrite history/make people forget, but they will never change the reality itself though.

See also racism and vaccines. Used to be racism was being a cunt to anyone a different color to you and a vaccine stopped you getting a thing and passing it on.

It's stupid how racism now is saying a bad word/implying something obvious.

 

[teriyakiburns]

That's when "smartphone zombies" started being a thing.

The iphone was like a second eternal september.

 

[ToroidalBoat]

It's stupid how racism now is saying a bad word/implying something obvious.

Pretty much every buzzword for "bad thing" in wokeism is an interchangeable way of saying "wrongthink".

In other words, "racist", "sexist", and "anti-vaxxer" can all mean "one who thinks in problematic way".

iphone was like a second eternal september.

If Steve Jobs came up with the idea of the smartphone, or at least how to mass-market it, maybe it's an idea he should've ditched.

 

[SCSI]

Relevant to the conversation, I just got this email today from Discord:

Here's the blogpost the email linked. (Archive)

New and updated Community Guidelines: To help make Discord a safer place for everyone, we are prohibiting harmful misinformation and will now consider off-platform behavior in some cases. We’ve also updated the protected attributes in our hate speech policy to include caste, gender identity, age, serious illness, and more.

Misinformation. Content that is false or misleading and may lead to significant risk of physical or societal harm may not be shared on Discord. Examples of harm that we consider include damaging physical infrastructure, injury to others, preventing participation in civic processes, and endangering public health.

Hate speech. We are adding caste, gender identity, age, and serious illness as protected attributes to our hate speech policy.

Off-platform behaviors. We will now consider relevant off-platform behaviors when making policy and enforcement assessments. This includes membership or association with a hate group, illegal activities, and hateful, violent sexual, or other types of violent acts.

There's an entire additional page now for "addressing health misinformation." (Archive) You probably already guessed what this is about, so I'll put just one highlight below.

Looking Ahead​

Digital misinformation is harmful because it hinders people’s ability to come to well-reasoned conclusions — and it does so at a rate faster than what is possible with in-person dialogue. Seeing the rise of incomplete, incorrect, or misleading online health information during the COVID-19 pandemic has been particularly concerning. We want to continue to ensure that this content does not spread on our platform even after the world rebuilds from the coronavirus.

And they also have an entire dedicated page for "off-site no no behavior". (Archive)

Credible evidence may include:

• Public content posted on another platform that can be confidently attributed to a Discord user
• Note: Content altered with the intention to frame a user will not be considered, and false reporting may result in action by Trust & Safety.
• Law enforcement actions or requests
• Legal requests
• Press coverage of the behavior by a reputable journalistic source

When considering reported incidents under this policy, we will assess the account with restorative justice principles in mind. We may decline to take action on the account if: the off-platform behavior occurred in the distant past; the person has gone through a credible rehabilitation process, or they received justice-oriented punishment in the past (such as required time at a correctional facility); and the investigation and assessment shows there is no evidence of the behavior taking place on Discord. We also may remove an account from suspension based on an appeal.

 

[ToroidalBoat]

Relevant to the conversation, I just got this email today from Discord:

wow they're really trying to crack down on freedom of speech

Many sites try to impose excessive "terms of service" and "community guidelines".*

American sites seem to be the usual - or only - ones trying to impose them. It's also alarming how wannabe commies running a site are trying to police offsite behavior.

*("community guidelines" is such a soy-sounding term)

 

[SCSI]

wow they're really trying to crack down on freedom of speech

A lot of sites try to impose excessive "terms of service" and "community guidelines".*

American sites seem to be the usual - if not only - ones trying to impose them. It's also alarming how wannabe commies running a site are trying to police one's behavior when not using a site now.

*("community guidelines" is such a soy-sounding term)

Yup, and it's especially nasty when you notice just how much the previous wave of consolidation (reddit and Facebook) is now funneling into just Discord as some sort of metasite Borg blob. I've lost count of how many lingering traditional forums, subreddits, Facebook groups (ugh), Twitter accounts, and even Steam forums are all now mostly ghost towns, with not much left but a "go to our Discord!" redirect. Hell, even Github issue trackers are getting offloaded -- there are a number of machine learning projects I follow that have moved almost all their communication to Discord. Piss off the often-psychotic (literally) Discord jannies and get banned, and you've just gotten kicked from what seems like half the English-language user-driven web, even professional communication channels. Do not like.

 

[ToroidalBoat]

Do not like.

Can you imagine if "Discord" became the only way to communicate on a Clown World honknet run by a psychotic woke cult?

With all the "community guidelines" forbidding "wrongthink" on and off the site, and no way to challenge The Narrative™ without ban?

definitely a cyberpunk dystopia there

 

[Dom Cruise]

No I don't think it was fear. I think the time was right.

But you can see how the whole vaccine/antivax thing is to filter out the 'uncontrollables'. But I don't think they can hack reality in that sense. They can rewrite history/make people forget, but they will never change the reality itself though.

Probably not, but I can imagine bored elites would find it to fun to try it and see what happens, when you already have all the money and power what's left to strive for other than absolute power in a cosmic sense?

At the very least I picture the far future as being some THX 1138 style nightmare, I mean that system where no one has any individuality or individual thought is already being built literally as we speak, Twitter is Big Brother.

We want to continue to ensure that this content does not spread on our platform even after the world rebuilds from the coronavirus.

lol, "as the world rebuilds", so melodramatic, the only thing that's really happened in my town is some restaurants closed permanently (only for new ones being opened in their place), some apocalypse.

Yup, and it's especially nasty when you notice just how much the previous wave of consolidation (reddit and Facebook) is now funneling into just Discord as some sort of metasite Borg blob. I've lost count of how many lingering traditional forums, subreddits, Facebook groups (ugh), Twitter accounts, and even Steam forums are all now mostly ghost towns, with not much left but a "go to our Discord!" redirect. Hell, even Github issue trackers are getting offloaded -- there are a number of machine learning projects I follow that have moved almost all their communication to Discord. Piss off the often-psychotic (literally) Discord jannies and get banned, and you've just gotten kicked from what seems like half the English-language user-driven web, even professional communication channels. Do not like.

Everything is becoming so consolidated, I miss the days of fan sites and forums, Discord is fine for chatting one on one or with a small group of folks, but the community feature is confusing as hell, reminds me of Reddit, forums are so much easier to grasp.

It's easy to talk a big talk about "I would rather die than submit to these people" but as time goes on it's increasingly not going to be a joke as going against the grain can ruin your life more and more, imagine if you're only option is submitting to Woke or being homeless and not being able to securely get food, it's no joke, the temptation to submit is going to be there for anyone.

You might think "oh, well I'll just live off the land like uncle Ted" but I can guarantee you that eventually they would hunt anyone down doing something like that and still demand your submission or ultimately they'll just kill you outright or put you in a camp.

It reminds me of the Book of Revelations, I've been hearing my whole life that one day there will be a system that will demand your absolute obedience or face death, sounded crazy for the longest time but now it's not funny.

More recently I also remember talk about FEMA camps, also sounded crazy but not anymore with the way the unvaccinated have been demonized or talk like "racism should be considered a public health crisis", the idea of there literally being camps where you're brainwashed into submission is also no joke anymore, it's already the reality in China, could it be coming to the US?

 

[SCSI]

Can you imagine if "Discord" became the only way to communicate on a Clown World honknet run by a psychotic woke cult?

With all the "community guidelines" forbidding "wrongthink" on and off the site, and no way to challenge The Narrative™ without ban?

definitely a cyberpunk dystopia there

It'd be like getting banned as a customer by Ma Bell in the 70s, and your final bill tells you the only way to contest it, shy of a lawsuit, is calling the customer service hotline.

Bonus cyberpunk -- consider that the main way of working around your nightmare scenario would be reviving ancient services like IRC and Usenet, accessed via pirated internet service. On the one hand, IRC was normie-repellent and that kept it cozy (and weird) (same thing), especially during the dead of night. On the other hand, netsplits, flooding, and random assholes spamming Winnuke were less fun. At least things being all ASCII text meant you didn't need to worry about people bombing a channel with cheese pizza.

Everything is becoming so consolidated, I miss the days of fan sites and forums, Discord is fine for chatting one on one or with a small group of folks, but the community feature is confusing as hell, reminds me of Reddit, forums are so much easier to grasp.

Same, and I especially miss the fansites that were truly homebrew, rather than parked on all the big wikias and their ilk. There was some amazing stuff out there that people built themselves, rather than just sitting around waiting for next product to consume, especially for 1st-2nd edition Shadowrun and the original World of Darkness games. So glad I ripped and archived some of the best pen and paper RPG fansites of 1996-2004, though I regret not archiving even more. (I should dump my rips of some of those long-gone sites somewhere on KF maybe, though dunno where I'd put it. I'm open to suggestions, if people want a thread for sharing early fansite archives.) But trying to scrape some of those mammoth sites that collected user submissions on 56K dialup... <insert thousand yard stare here> And some of the forums attached to those sites were incredible -- back on the Sanguinis Curiae boards, there was a thread that ran for north of a hundred posts of people trying to work out plausible demographics for the vampire/werewolf/etc population relative to a given human population to prey on, for example. The autism was glorious.

It's easy to talk a big talk about "I would rather die than submit to these people" but as time goes on it's increasingly not going to be a joke as going against the grain can ruin your life more and more, imagine if you're only option is submitting to Woke or being homeless and not being able to securely get food, it's no joke, the temptation to submit is going to be there for anyone.

You might think "oh, well I'll just live off the land like uncle Ted" but I can guarantee you that eventually they would hunt anyone down doing something like that and still demand your submission or ultimately they'll just kill you outright or put you in a camp.

It reminds me of the Book of Revelations, I've been hearing my whole life that one day there will be a system that will demand your absolute obedience or face death, sounded crazy for the longest time but now it's not funny.

More recently I also remember talk about FEMA camps, also sounded crazy but not anymore with the way the unvaccinated have been demonized or talk like "racism should be considered a public health crisis", the idea of there literally being camps where you're brainwashed into submission is also no joke anymore, it's already the reality in China, could it be coming to the US?

Yeah, and the consolidation just makes it easier and easier to find and punish anyone who intentionally or unintentionally fails to comply. If everything's on some omni-blob platform where it's the same cabal of zealot jannies watching everything, security through obscurity where someone'd have to put in at least a little effort to find whatever naughty thing you did on some low-traffic forum or listserv goes right out the window.

Added bonus nightmare fuel -- don't forget that Microsoft was trying to buy Discord last year, and Amazon has also put out feelers. It fell through that time, but how long until MS backs up an even bigger dumptruck full of money to the house of whoever owns it?

 

[byuu]

That's literally what the mainstream is. It's not the place to find fringe stuff by definition.

 

[Dom Cruise]

Same, and I especially miss the fansites that were truly homebrew, rather than parked on all the big wikias and their ilk. There was some amazing stuff out there that people built themselves, rather than just sitting around waiting for next product to consume, especially for 1st-2nd edition Shadowrun and the original World of Darkness games. So glad I ripped and archived some of the best pen and paper RPG fansites of 1996-2004, though I regret not archiving even more. (I should dump my rips of some of those long-gone sites somewhere on KF maybe, though dunno where I'd put it. I'm open to suggestions, if people want a thread for sharing early fansite archives.) But trying to scrape some of those mammoth sites that collected user submissions on 56K dialup... <insert thousand yard stare here>

I'd love to see that stuff if you'd be so kind to share, maybe just a make a thread about it?

And some of the forums attached to those sites were incredible -- back on the Sanguinis Curiae boards, there was a thread that ran for north of a hundred posts of people trying to work out plausible demographics for the vampire/werewolf/etc population relative to a given human population to prey on, for example. The autism was glorious.

There used to be a real magic to things, you'd never see something like that today.

It makes me feel sick to stomach to think about how much things have declined already and where things might be going from here.

Yeah, and the consolidation just makes it easier and easier to find and punish anyone who intentionally or unintentionally fails to comply. If everything's on some omni-blob platform where it's the same cabal of zealot jannies watching everything, security through obscurity where someone'd have to put in at least a little effort to find whatever naughty thing you did on some low-traffic forum or listserv goes right out the window.

Added bonus nightmare fuel -- don't forget that Microsoft was trying to buy Discord last year, and Amazon has also put out feelers. It fell through that time, but how long until MS backs up an even bigger dumptruck full of money to the house of whoever owns it?

These people are the opposite of "live and let live", they're incensed by the very idea of having to share the planet with people not like them, any attempts to build some compound with like minded people would eventually result in them going full on Waco on your ass.

 

[ToroidalBoat]

I've been hearing my whole life that one day there will be a system that will demand your absolute obedience or face death, sounded crazy for the longest time but now it's not funny.

Like I said, 2020 has really increased misanthropy.

It can make one wonder if the species as a whole is even capable of running a world without running it into a dystopia.

 

[SCSI]

I'd love to see that stuff if you'd be so kind to share, maybe just a make a thread about it?

I'd be happy to. And I remembered that I actually have a backup of my browser bookmarks from 2004 still kicking around (bless the TEAC CD-RW drive that burned a disc able to still be read 18 years later), so I'll check and see if any of those classic PnP sites I didn't scrape are either still alive somehow, or got Waybacked before they went dark and add them too. I have a shitload of tech news and articles from 2000-2004 that were all great worldbuilding fodder for cyberpunk settings hoarded too, and a lot of those are no longer available online either. (The real prize is some ancient DARPA vendor whitepapers, some of which were posted publicly, others leaked out when they fucked up and left their doc server open for about 6 hours one day. All you had to do, IIRC, was guess the URL. Kid in a candy store.) Funny how many of those are either relevant IRL because they ended up making the jump from the lab to the market, or their descendants are still stuck in perpetual "just 10 more years!" hell (but still being used to milk tons of money out of investors and government agencies).

I'll dig around in those archives and let you know when I make the thread, it'll probably be over in Internet & Technology. Maybe it can end up being a place for everyone to hoard cool lost data or something.