We Need Way More Censorship: A Plea to Big Tech to Save Us All

We Need Way More Censorship: A Plea to Big Tech to Save Us All
By Nodgih Nalon (and Censored Guest)
April 1, 2021

In an effort to protect freedom of speech, we have spent our adult lives working with numerous well-known national organizations in support of the First Amendment. We mistakenly believed that protecting access to a diversity of ideas would strengthen our perspective. We even thought that the proper response to bad speech was better speech, more thoughtful speech. However, recent events have made it crystal clear that we have too much freedom and the social media landscape provides the perfect proof. The population has shown a proclivity for using false or misleading information as a pretext for electoral stupidity and violence. Clearly, educating the populace on how to discern fact from fiction will not solve the problem. There is something uniquely special about today’s citizens, they are lost forever and cannot be taught how to spot false information. Unlike the rest of us, they did not pop out of the womb with critical thinking skills. Our only recourse is more censorship. Luckily, we have been blessed with massive and unaccountable tech-companies who are willing to use their unmatched power to censor problematic speech. Although we laud their efforts thus far, we’d like to see them go further.

First, much praise is owed to Big Tech for finally taking the initiative, after four years of the Donald Trump presidency and prodding from Democrats in Congress, to censor right-leaning content that appeals to white supremacy, misogyny, and anti-science. Such content is not only indefensible, but dangerous. It is this exact content that fuels incels, Bugaloo Boys, the January 6th “insurrection,” and terrorists such as Caesar Sayoc. Forget countering erroneous or thoughtless communication, just ban it! But why stop at the right? There is a whole left side and center of the ideological spectrum that promotes false and misleading content that has been used to justify violence. We must censor more!

Let’s not forget that historically, leftist propaganda was associated with the contraction of human rights and even murder in places like Cuba, Venezuela, and the U.S.S.R. In the U.S., leftist content has led to cyber-bullying from people such as Neera Tanden. Similarly, James T. Hodgkinson shot a Republican member of congress and four others after being indoctrinated by leftist content online. Big Tech needs to remove this left wing propaganda immediately.
However, fake news is not just a problem on the left and the right, but the center too. For example, neoliberal centrists spent the last four years spreading nonsense about Russiagate, including bogus claims that Russia hacked DNC emails, has Trump’s pee tape, put bounties on U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan (why are we still there again?), hijacked and shut down a Vermont power gird, infiltrated Bernie Sanders’ campaign, and that’s only a partial list of the alleged meddling ways of Putin. Worse, centrists have spread much bigger lies that claimed trickle-down economics and austerity policies would lead to national and individual prosperity. Instead, they have been associated with death and despair, along with a widening wealth gap unseen in the U.S. Big Tech, it is up to you to censor any person or institution promoting left, center, or right leaning ideology – Fox and MSNBC, Democrats and Republicans, socialist and fascists – and they must all be deplatformed from social media immediately!

But wait. It’s not only politics driving lies, hate, and violence, but religion, too. Religion relies on baseless, unprovable claims and falsehoods (that is why it is a belief system). Imagine convincing a monkey to give up all of their bananas today so they can have bananas forever in the afterlife. Good luck with that. For argument’s sake, even if one religion is absolutely correct, that means all the rest are false. Spreading falsehoods, we are repeatedly told, is dangerous. Seems there’s a lot of censoring left to do. Essentially, we know that a massive portion of the global population believe, support, defend, and act upon religious falsehoods, but we are just not sure which population of believers is factually accurate.

The solution: censor them all. After all, religious falsehoods have been far more devastating for human beings than the statements that resulted in previous users being deplatformed. Just consider the Crusades, 9/11, fascism, abortion clinic bombings, sexual assault, genital mutilation, genocide, willy-nilly state-sponsored terrorism, and numerous other horrific crimes against humanity, all in the name of some high-minded moral superiority. Any person or institution affiliated with a religion needs to be removed from social media A.S.A.P. Come on Big Tech, get Old Testament on these folks. Do not let the atheists and agnostics off the hook either. Not only was Jeffery Dahmer an atheist, but the mass murders committed by the state in the U.S.S.R. were predicated on secularism. More recently, secularist content resulted in the mass shooting of Jared Lee Loughner and Connor Betts. And those who are terminally cynical and negative, hey Big Tech, let’s get to the nihilists, too. It is also time to censor those who believe in nothing at all!

In addition to political ideologies and religions, empires and the people who comprise them need to be censored. Their long patterns of using false and misleading content to justify colonization and genocide has wrought terror upon the globe. Their leaders, as well as taxpayers and supporters of this madness, need to be deplatformed. For example, as an empire, the U.S. has promulgated fake news about nations such as Iraq, Iran, Venezuela, Guatemala, Cuba, Vietnam, and others as a pre-text for war and regime change (against international law). The U.S. is hardly alone, China, Russia, and the United Kingdom have engaged in similar behavior. Their lies were amplified by members of the press, intelligentsia, and social media users. The results were millions of deaths. As a result, everyone living in an empire – especially those in government, academia, and news media – needs to be censored from social media.

Most importantly, COVID made it clear that those who deny science – the anti-vaxxers/masks – are a dangerous force that need to be censored. Go get them Big Tech. The same is true for the pro-science people. After all, they advocated for a field of inquiry and creation that brought about the atomic bomb and chemical warfare, and Big Pharma has been responsible for the deaths of thousands with their dope pushing while claiming to help people. So Big Tech, censor those that understand and support science as well as those that challenge and deny it. There is much work to be done across the spectrum!

Lastly, Big Tech needs to censor corporations in general. They have used lies to covered-up their complacency in compromising the health and life span of consumers. Because greed is not good when you are poisoning, polluting, and murdering the populace: censor these corporations Big Tech! In fact, Big Tech, you created the platforms that allow these falsehoods and to foster hate. In the process you have profited as the human race is increasingly divided and engaged in fatalistic violence. Meanwhile, your algorithms have been shown to be dangerously problematic, not only because they are racist and sexist, but because they feed users the very false content that has brought about the need for censorship. So, Big Tech, it is time to censor your big self. Calling on Big Tech for self-censorship!

Finally, we need to censor the authors of this article. Their pithy disregard for peoples’ proclivity for censorship is disgusting! In fact, help us out Big-tech, no one should be allowed to read or say anything, anywhere, anymore (especially online). Good night, and good luck!

Nodgih Nalon, BS., is a scholar of down is up at the Make Believe University. His most recent publication is “You Cannot Believe What You Read.” She is currently serving as an insurrectionist at the Council on Illiteracy. They just celebrated another trip around the sun and hope to go to Mars with Elon Musk soon. The Censored Guest writing for this article is, well, Censored already, and rightfully so. ;)