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Endemic Censorship Raises Urgency for Blockchain Based Social Networks

Last Updated March 4, 2021 4:51 PM
Andrew Quentson
Last Updated March 4, 2021 4:51 PM

“Beware he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart, he dreams himself your master.” – Commisioner Pravin Lal, Alpha Centauri

There was a time when the media was, or we believed it to be, independent and unbiased, but the full on, no holds barred, political battle that has now engulfed United States has revealed our mass media is fully controlled and no different than USSR’s Pravada, Qatar’s Al Jazeera or China’s Xinhua.

For the first time in modern history we are experiencing a battle for access to information. On the one hand, the mass media is fully engaged on unproven sexual allegations, focusing on trivial matters such as body shaming, private gossip, ignoring fully hugely important questions that face our nation, such as the economy, war and peace, education, law and order.

On the other hand, that corner of the internet where the promises of the 90s still live on – uncensored, unfiltered, free speech – is immersed in astounding revelations from wikileaks. From Saudi’s funding of ISIS, Hillary’s own admission that she is lying to the public in having “public and private positions”, complete collusion between the media and Hillary’s campaign, to a striking revelation :

[W]e’ve all been quite content to demean government, drop civics and in general conspire to produce an unaware and compliant citizenry. The unawareness remains strong but compliance is obviously fading rapidly. This problem demands some serious, serious thinking – and not just ppoll-driven demographically-inspired messaging.

 

While all are busy following this spectacle, the state machinery has just opened a new war front in Yemen, has begun beating the drums with Russia with Hillary’s super cavalier attitudes fully shown : “We’re going to ring China with missile defense.”

The new media elites, from Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, far from championing freedom have instead engaged in overt censorship. For no known reason, an investigative journalist was blocked from his twitter account, bringing to mind actions taken by the most deprived dictatorships especially considering that government elites may have demanded such actions. They are constantly accused of manipulating the trending stories, removing highly popular revelations and numerous other acts of censorship or manipulation.

For mainstream media, it is fully hopeless as shown by David Seaman  and others being fired for reporting on Hillary’s health. As we later saw, his reporting had merit for Hillary collapsed.

If this was not sufficient, there is now proof our elected leaders are fully controlled with seemingly banks dictating personnel and thus policy. New Republic, reporting on wikileaks  revelations on emails just before Obama was elected, states:

“Michael Froman, who is now U.S. trade representative but at the time was an executive at Citigroup, wrote an email to Podesta on October 6, 2008, with the subject “Lists.” Froman used a Citigroup email address. He attached three documents: a list of women for top administration jobs, a list of non-white candidates, and a sample outline of 31 cabinet-level positions and who would fill them. “The lists will continue to grow,” Froman wrote to Podesta, “but these are the names to date that seem to be coming up as recommended by various sources for senior level jobs.” The cabinet list ended up being almost entirely on the money.”

Except for the media’s behavior as, in effect, a propaganda arm, much of the above was previously suspected, but now that it is fully proven, technology that enforces freedom gains intense priority.

Blockchain Comes to the Rescue

Blockchain based social media provide a solution for at least another decade or two. Akasha , an ethereum based social network soon to launch, uses IPFS, a bittorrent like system for storage and sharing, in combination with ethereum’s blockchain to provide an uncensorable social network that merges twitter, medium, facebook and reddit all in one.

To minimize the visibility of content we all find repulsive, Akasha allows users to choose what tags and users they follow, as well as within their own following network to curate content by voting that has a cost, thus encouraging the sharing of quality content and potentially minimizing disruptive behavior.

Akasha
Akasha, a social media network based on the Ethereum blockchain.

It is just one of likely many attempts to employ blockchain’s technology towards permissionless communication that has no middle man. It further comes just in time as there are good reasons to suspect, especially if Hillary is elected, that elites may tighten the screw on the internet especially after they have now witnessed its power in making available information they really would like us to not know.

I’m sure they’ll now be keen to move towards a re-inforcing of the internet into facebok, google, reddit, twitter, walls and further “conspire” towards producing “an unaware and compliant citizenry,” manipulating the content inside of the internet mainstream and turn it into propaganda. Something we are already seeing in action at r/politics where endemic censorship and banning has created a controlled forum.

However, the technology is finally here for uncensorable social networks and entrepreneurs who successfully execute are likely to be much rewarded. We may therefore see a new blockchain based social networks race if democracy and our freedoms are to be maintained.

Images from Shutterstock and Akasha.