How Billionaires Destroy our Lives by Censoring Truth and Promoting Lies

Access to accurate information is a human right, especially information that exposes the crimes of people in power

Why is it that the same content will soar on some platforms and be completely ignored on others? A story that’s embraced in one place will be despised in another. It’s the same quality work. The human beings that use the differing platforms are also essentially the same.

The reason is that the platforms themselves decide which content to elevate and which content to bury.

I’ve personally wasted a lot of my life on platforms that clearly did not want the world to hear what I wanted to say. In large part, our society is blind to the fact that this is happening.

Part of the problem is that Americans inherently believe in the concept of meritocracy. In the absence of contradictory evidence, the general public looks at a successful content creator and assumes their success is linked to the quality of the work.

That is not the case.

We are far enough into the digital age that the consumer base should have learned a few things by now. One of the basic truths about modern reality is that if you have a direct feed into a massive distribution mechanism, your message will be broadcast to the mainstream whether it’s truthful, valuable, malicious, or toxic.

We need common sense protections.

This is a massive problem confronting humanity and our response has been completely irresponsible. The solution is not to selectively ban any platform that is owned by a foreign nation. Our solution must be to regulate all social media platforms to ensure the content they elevate reflects the beliefs and values of actual human beings.

Half-truths and misrepresentation

Are social media platforms a security threat? Well, potentially yes. There’s evidence to suggest that these apps can track users, harvest data, and perhaps even be a portal through which malware can be added to your phone. We don’t think about this often because apps are ubiquitous and much of our economy depends on consumers downloading various files and programs without thinking about it twice.

However, on some level, we all know better than to click on a link in some strange email or text message from a person we don’t know.

Downloading an app is clicking on a link.

All of those issues are legitimate concerns. The problem is that our government is taking the illogical approach of ignoring these concerns across all platforms and pretending they can “fix it” by targeting and banning one or two apps. I don’t feel it’s a coincidence that the one app they’re fixated on, in this case Tiktok, is the one that’s currently a source of embarrassment for the GOP.

This is a case of misdirection.

The oath of office specifically mentions “all enemies, foreign and domestic.” There’s plenty of evidence that social media constitutes a threat to the general public. It doesn’t make sense that our government should ignore that threat when it has a domestic origin, but address it when the origin is foreign.

A threat is a threat and the American people deserve to be protected from malicious US based social media platforms as much as malicious foreign based social media platforms. Banning the foreign ones doesn’t solve anything. The general public needs protections from all malicious platforms.

The problem is, they like misinformation

Why is it that I don’t have greater control over all the platforms I interact with? For example, on streaming sites, I’d prefer to remove all movie recommendations that feature Kevin James, Mark Wahlberg, Tim Allen, Adam Sandler, Roseanne Barr, Mel Gibson, Clint Eastwood and many more.

If any of those media personalities are in a film, I don’t want to see it. Why can’t I establish that in the settings and never have a film pushed on me that features any of them? To me, it feels like the “selected for you” sections are just the same movies they want to promote anyway. The question is: are they catering to your tastes, or are they trying to program your tastes to make you cater to them?

The same thing is true of the news media I read. I am never interested in reading about Tucker Carlson, Jesse Watters, Ted Cruz, or any of the Kardashians. Why don’t I have access to a portal that deletes any news story that references any of these people?

On social media, I don’t want to see advertisements related to Christianity, hate groups, hunting, dating sites, or conservative fundraising. Social media is a special case because some of them offer an “ad center” where you can go in and set what you want to see. I’ve experimented with that only to immediately see the exact ads I’ve specifically blocked. I feel those settings are like the button on a pedestrian crosswalk. It’s installed so you have something to do while you wait for the light to change.

The whole fundamental purpose of these platforms is that they can control the flow of information. The only time the government cries foul is when a platform exposes a lie that’s been told by one of the major American political parties.

The general public needs to be more vocal in defending its right to control and access accurate information.

We can’t allow malicious forces to determine social narratives

There’s not enough discussion over how big a problem it is that we are all at the mercy of major media conglomerates. When just a few companies control everything, then it’s easy for them to control what we think.

I have experience working in small media. In 2006 there was a media hyped scare over the bird flu. Even then, most publications just grabbed their information from widespread press releases.

I’m not really a journalist, but I wanted some context as to how dangerous the bird flu actually was. So, I sat down and dug up the numbers as to how many people actually had the bird flu and divided that by the total world population. I came up with a worldwide percentage that consisted of a decimal point followed by a lengthy column of zeros. I realized I’d stumbled across a fabricated story and I was disgusted about how widely it was believed.

There is inherent risk to the bird flu just like any flu, but the “global pandemic” the media advertised never materialized.

There’s no room in the media for educated opinions

I wrote a little story at the time claiming that the fears were overblown, but of course my position never got any traction. This represents the essential problem of worldwide media. Interest, and therefore money, is generated by stoking unreasonable fears. The power exists to silence anyone who speaks out on the side of reason.

We don’t have to resign ourselves to live a life of misery within this flawed mechanism.

I feel it’s a better use of resources to direct our global attention to actually meaningful and relevant problems.

For example, we should be discussing the detrimental effect of the control the media wields over our psyche and disposition. They incite us to rage and fear, and that tricks large groups of people into making colossally bad decisions.

Platforms that spread information need to be free and open to the public. We can’t have one or two powerful entities controlling the information that determines the choices we make. We can’t have them burying the truth so they can elevate their lies.

Break up the media

The kicker is that we already have anti-trust laws in the United States. We already know that it’s detrimental to the free market to allow a select group of individuals wield disproportionate control. We have phrases like price fixing that were conceived as a label for unethical and illegal behavior, but which today seem to be seen as “just good business.”

Maybe we need to discuss “narrative fixing,” and define it as the process by which billionaires dupe the general public into not realizing they’re being lied to, oppressed, and exploited.

It simply doesn’t make sense that the same high quality content will be embraced on one platform and completely flop on another. When that happens, you can be sure that somebody on the back end has his finger on the scale.

Access to accurate information is a human right

We often talk about the importance of a meritocracy. It’s to the benefit of all humanity that good and actionable ideas should rise to the top. The world population should have the opportunity to participate in an uncensored discussion to determine the best way humanity can move forward.

What we have today is a situation where the conversation is controlled to serve the needs of a tiny, oppressive class of elites. Lies are accepted as unquestionable truth, and the rational, educated positions of experts are derided and ignored.

This is unsustainable.

We don’t have a meritocracy in the media. We have the opposite. Banning one platform isn’t the way to solve the problem. What we need to ban is the mechanism of control that’s keeping all of humanity downtrodden and ignorant.

Please consider upgrading to a paid sponsorship if you can! It keeps me going. All of these discounts are forever.

This publication is reader sponsored. If you have the means, please consider sponsoring at whatever level is comfortable for you!

My CoSchedule referral link

Here’s my referral link to my preferred headline analyzer tool. If you sign up through this, it’s another way to support this newsletter (thank you).