The State of the Media Landscape Pt. 2
Our information ecosystem is shifting and we have the capability to steer it in the right direction.
This article is the second part of a two-part series. Read part one here.
In part one of this series, we discussed some changes and developments that have recently occurred at several corporate media outlets and contextualized those changes within the broader media landscape. In this second and final part of this series, we’ll discuss similar changes and developments that have occurred on various social media platforms.
All of these recent stories could potentially have serious consequences, and they all pertain to our access to information and right to free speech in one way or another.
Social Media
Twitter
Twitter versus Substack
In the second to last story of the first part of this series, we went over Matt Taibbi’s recent appearance on Medhi Hasan’s show on MSNBC, but there’s another development that has to do with Taibbi and his reporting on the Twitter Files. That is, unfortunately, it looks very unlikely that we’ll see more of it anytime soon.
This is due to a current rift between Substack and Twitter. The former platform rolled out a new feature that looks and functions similarly to the latter, and in response to Substack’s new feature, Twitter CEO Elon Musk limited the reach of posts containing links to Substack. That decision led to Taibbi essentially being forced to choose between the website where he publishes his work and the website he uses to promote that work. Unsurprisingly, Taibbi chose Substack over Twitter, which makes any future reporting on the Twitter Files from him improbable at best.
This entire situation is yet another example of Musk failing to live up to his self-prescribed free speech absolutism, which is disappointing, to say the least.
State-Affiliated and Government-Funded Drama
Another development that has recently occurred on Twitter is the platform dropping its “state-affiliated” and “government-funded” labels that had been placed on state-linked journalists and media outlets. When that policy was put into place it was primarily used on outlets that had ties to governments outside of the US empire like Russia, China, and Iran. A few weeks back, however, Twitter changed the policy so the label applied to even more “state-affiliated” outlets, including National Public Radio (NPR) and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC).
In response to gaining that label on its account, NPR threw a temper tantrum and stopped using Twitter altogether, which led to the label getting changed from “state-affiliated” to “government-funded”. (I’m not sure how one label is preferable to the other; I guess “government-funded” is the soft language version of “state-affiliated”?) A similar situation also occurred with the CBC.
Many people claimed that NPR shouldn’t have had either label placed on its account because it only receives around one percent of its funding from the federal government — a statistic that is technically true but also misleading. One percent of NPR’s funding might be the amount it directly receives from the federal government, but it indirectly receives much more federal funding through various other sources.
However, even if the entirety of federal funds NPR receives was only one percent (or less, even) it still absolutely deserves that label. If Twitter’s policy was to inform users about media outlets’ ties to governments, then it should’ve always applied that policy consistently, but it now appears that NPR and other “government-funded” and “state-affiliated” outlets won’t have to worry about either label anymore.
Facebook
Censoring Seymour Hersh
Speaking of “state-affiliated” organizations, Facebook’s NATO-aligned “fact-checkers” have recently placed a “false information” warning label on two articles (if not more) by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh.
https://twitter.com/shellenberger/status/1648822680295186432
In one of the articles, Hersh alleges that the US government was behind the attack on the Nordstream pipelines that carried natural gas from Russia to Germany. The other article alleges that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and other people within Ukraine’s government have been embezzling hundreds of millions of dollars from aid sent to them by the US government.
The corporate press has largely ignored and disparaged Hersh’s reporting, and this latest move by Facebook will severely limit the reach of these articles should anybody try to share them on the platform. The establishment clearly doesn’t want the information in Hersh’s reporting to reach the general public, which, in my opinion, only adds more credibility to the claims that were made in that reporting.
I attempted to share both articles myself just to see if Facebook was still warning users that the articles were “fact-checked”, and sure enough:
TikTok
The RESTRICT Act (a.k.a. The PATRIOT Act 2.0)
When it comes to social media, one of the most dangerous and currently ongoing developments is the introduction of the Restricting the Emergence of Security Threats that Risk Information and Communications Technology (RESTRICT) Act in the US Senate.
This bill is ostensibly meant to ban the social media platform TikTok from the US due to allegations that ByteDance, the platform’s parent company, is collecting data from and spying on US citizens on behalf of the Chinese government. TikTok does collect an enormous amount of data, and the Chinese government does have quite a bit of sway over Chinese companies, but that doesn’t necessarily mean the allegations against TikTok are confirmed. Also, if the concern is really about who has access to our data, our focus should be on US-based government agencies and tech companies that also engage in mass data collection.
This bill is far more sweeping than simply banning TikTok — and even if that was all this bill did, that would still be an authoritarian action that deserves to be condemned regardless of one’s personal opinion of TikTok. As J.D. Tuccille recently wrote for Reason:
The RESTRICT Act proposed by Sen. Mark Warner (D–Va.) and a list of co-sponsors including Sen. John Thune (R–S.D.), doesn't mention "TikTok," or parent company "ByteDance," or even "social media." Instead, it hands a whole lot of power to the government, particularly the Secretary of Commerce, "to review and prohibit certain transactions between persons in the United States and foreign adversaries" regarding information and communications technology.
The RESTRICT Act is so broad in the powers that it would grant to the government that it has been compared to the PATRIOT Act — a far-reaching and unconstitutional bill that was passed in the wake of the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center. The US government has never fully ceded the powers granted to it by the PATRIOT Act, and it’s very probable that the same will be true of the RESTRICT Act 20-plus years from now should it end up being signed into law.
Adult Platforms
Pornhub Blocks Utah
At the beginning of May, Pornhub, one of the world’s largest pornography sites, blocked access to the entire state of Utah due to a recent bill that just passed the Utah legislature. The bill, S.B. 287, requires porn sites to verify the age of their users, which means users will be forced to provide identification to access those sites. The supposed aim of the bill is to prevent minors from viewing pornography, but in its attempt at achieving that goal, the legislation will also violate the privacy of many Utahns.
The Utah bill was based on a law that passed in Louisiana last year, and similar laws are in the works in many other states across the country. While it’s reasonable to want to prevent minors from viewing pornography, these types of laws will likely fail to have the desired effect, and the risk to privacy is not worth what little effect they may have.
The unfortunate reality is kids, especially teenagers, will find ways around these regulations. Whether that’s by using much less reputable sites in darker corners of the internet, using someone else’s ID to access porn sites, or simply using a virtual private network (VPN), there will always be some way to bypass these laws. No amount of state action will ever guarantee that minors will be unable to view pornography on the internet.
Utah also passed a law recently that will require all Utahns to give identification just for accessing social media sites, once again out of a supposed attempt to save minors from the dangers of the internet. Under the law, minors will still be able to have social media accounts, but only if the platforms verify that the minor has parental consent.
These laws, on top of being incredibly paternalistic, are violations of privacy and set dangerous precedents, paving the way for the government, both state and federal, to further restrict our access to the internet, and by extension, information. Laws like these are framed around providing a veneer of safety, but they always lead to an increase in government authority and a decrease in individual liberty.
Honorable Mention
Blinken’s and Morrell’s “Russian Disinformation”
Last month, it was reported that Mike Morrell, a former chief of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), orchestrated a letter that was signed by 51 intelligence officials that claimed the Hunter Biden laptop scandal was a Russian disinformation campaign, and that he did so at the behest of Joe Biden’s current Secretary of State, Antony Blinken.
As Connor Freeman reported for Antiwar.com:
Mike Morrell, the former acting CIA director, revealed to the House Judiciary Committee, led by Rep. Jim Jordan, that he played a key role in rallying former intelligence officials to sign a letter which sought to discredit reporting on the Hunter Biden laptop scandal during the 2020 presidential campaign.
In a transcribed interview with Jordan’s team, Morell explained that his role in the suppression of the key story was done on behalf of the Joe Biden campaign and at the behest of now Secretary of State Antony Blinken who was then a senior campaign official.
That letter was used by corporate media to discredit the revelations revealed from Biden’s laptop right before the 2020 election, but most major media outlets have since acknowledged the laptop’s legitimacy. Not only did the corporate press ignore and smear the story of Biden’s laptop, but social media companies like Twitter and Facebook suppressed it, with Twitter going as far as completely blocking the link to the New York Post’s original reporting on the story.
To reiterate: Blinken, while working for Biden’s presidential campaign, colluded with a former chief of the CIA to discredit factual reporting that could’ve damaged Biden’s chance at winning the 2020 election, and Big Tech and the corporate press willfully went along with that fabricated narrative. This entire saga, specifically this recent revelation, highlights how intertwined the media and our political establishment really are.
Conclusion
As I’ve done my best to showcase in this series, the corporate press and some of the most popular social media platforms are compromised when it comes to defending and maintaining any sort of principle to free speech and they are clearly susceptible to the pressure our government puts on them to censor and moderate information. The silver lining in all of this is that alternative media, both news outlets and social media sites, are becoming increasingly popular with the average US citizen, and many of the developments we’ve discussed in this series are only exacerbating that trend.
Media of all kinds have long been useful tools for the regime to spread propaganda and advance narratives that serve to manufacture consent for the status quo and all the evils that accompany it. With the proliferation of the internet, the powers that be have begun to lose the grip they once had on the flow of information, and many of the stories discussed in this series are the establishment’s attempts to regain that control.
It is imperative that we reject any attempts that are made to stifle free speech and suppress the flow of information, regardless of whatever reasons our political and corporate elites give for doing so. One way we can do that is by choosing to use and support alternative outlets and platforms that openly defend those values and move away from ones that don’t. Our information ecosystem is shifting, and if we choose to do so, we have the capability to steer it in the right direction. However, its current trajectory does not look good, and the path we’re heading down leads to dark places. When the dust settles, the form our media landscape ends up taking is, ultimately, up to us.
Thanks for reading! If you enjoy my writing, feel free to subscribe to my Substack. You can also follow me on Twitter, Minds, or MeWe.
Thoroughly enjoyed both parts. Your analysis is excellent, as far as I am concerned. Musk.. really? Someone please wake him up.