No, it was not worse. It was only more obvious, nowadays it’s actually worse, because it seems on the outside that it’s not going on, plus many interesting people just left.
Discussion
Yeah they’ve become craftier. It’s the illusion of free speech now.
Exactly. I keep my old X account and I sometimes look what’s the latest psyop. I strictly just look, never interact, no likes, no replies, no nothing. It is interesting to watch what the algorithm tries to show me without any meaningful feedback apart from scrolling the timeline and lingering on some posts (I even don’t click on videos to play). It’s still looking like shaping the current narratives and the “bubbling” (emphasising one’s bubbles) is very pronounced. We might not get overt bans now, but shadowbanning and timeline shaping is much more sophisticated, and - because mostly covert - more dangerous then during covid. I’m not on Facebook for years and I have never used any other social networks in any meaningful way, but even on Twitter it’s very clear.
I don’t know if they ask for access to these types of things. But I would guess on some devices they’re tracking your eye movement too. So they can definitely tell what you’re looking at and paying attention to.
Covid censorship was more intense. It wasn’t meant to last.
It was meant to get you to accept this level of censorship. They’ll ramp it back up soon though for Israel. No doubt. It’s not meant to last again though. They’ll give us a consolation prize and we will have to be fine with that for five years until they ramp it up again.
Not with web browsers. I still don’t agree that it was more intense. It certainly FELT more intense, but I believe that the covert version we have now is actually harder. It’s no longer about deplatforming, but about limiting reach very aggressively, so most of even slightly controversial accounts are effectively talking to a wall.
What political leanings do these types of channels have?
I believe it’s actually both extremes, but as euroatlantic academia is now pretty left-locked, I think that overall leftist politics is universally deemed a bit more acceptable on social media.
So you’re seeing more left leaning channels being shadowbanned or talking to walls or whatever?
No, more right leaning channels are limited, because expressing left leaning views is deemed more acceptable.
Yeah I think that’s pretty accurate. I think this is a hard thing to quantify and or qualify. Especially coming from a position of not wanting anything (for adults) to be censored. It all kinda seems pretty binary to me when push comes to shove.
That’s been my experience too, although there has also been a hard line drawn for anti-war lefties like Hasan and myself. Anyone who isn’t a “lib”. The best old-Twitter metaphor I could make for it is that the mainstream social media are all the KHive now lol