Journalist Jonathan Cook has a new blog post out on his experience with being throttled into invisibility by Silicon Valley algorithmic suppression that will ring all too familiar for any online content creators who’ve been sufficiently critical of official western narratives over the last few years.
“My blog posts once attracted tens of thousands of shares,” Cook writes. “Then, as the algorithms tightened, it became thousands. Now, as they throttle me further, shares can often be counted in the hundreds. ‘Going viral’ is a distant memory.”
“I won’t be banned,” he adds. “I will fade incrementally, like a small star in the night sky — one among millions — gradually eclipsed as its neighbouring suns grow ever bigger and brighter. I will disappear from view so slowly you won’t even notice.”
Cook says this began after the 2016 US election, which was when a major narrative push began for Silicon Valley corporations to eliminate “fake news” from their platforms and soon saw tech executives brought before the US Senate and told that they must “quell information rebellions” and come up with a mission statement expressing their commitment to “prevent the fomenting of discord” online.
My latest: Is it already too late to say goodbye? Because those independent voices in the new media you so value will wither and decay like autumn leaves once they have no audience https://t.co/X6wbmpgHBe
— Jonathan Cook (@Jonathan_K_Cook) January 22, 2022
Arguably the most significant political moment in the United States since 9/11 and its immediate aftermath was when Democrats and their allied institutions concluded that Donald Trump’s election was a failure not of establishment politics but of establishment narrative control. From that point onwards, any online media creator who consistently disputes the narratives promoted by the same news outlets who’ve lied to us about every war has seen their view counts and new follows slashed.
By mid-2017 independent media outlets were already reporting across ideological lines that algorithm changes from important sources of viewership like Google had suddenly begun hiding their content from people who were searching for the subjects they reported on.
“In case anyone wants to know how Facebook suppression works — I have 330,000 followers there but they’ve stopped showing my posts to many people,” Redacted Tonight host Lee Camp tweeted in January 2018. “I used to gain 6,000 followers a week. I now gain 500 and FB unsubscribes people without their knowledge — so my total number never increases.”
I saw my own shares and view counts rapidly diminish in 2017 as well, and saw my new Facebook page follows suddenly slow to a virtual standstill. It wasn’t until I started using mailing lists and giving indie media outlets blanket permission to republish all my content that I was able to grow my audience at all.
And Silicon Valley did eventually admit that it was in fact actively censoring voices who fall outside the mainstream consensus. In order to disprove the false right-wing narrative that Google only censors rightist voices, the CEO of Google’s parent company Alphabet admitted in 2020 to algorithmically throttling World Socialist Website. Last year the CEO of Google-owned YouTube acknowledged that the platform uses algorithms to elevate “authoritative sources” while suppressing “borderline content” not considered authoritative, which apparently even includes just marginally establishment-critical left-of-center voices like Kyle Kulinski. Facebook spokeswoman Lauren Svensson said in 2018 that if the platform’s fact-checkers (including the state-funded establishment narrative management firm Atlantic Council) rule that a Facebook user has been posting false news, moderators will “dramatically reduce the distribution of all of their Page-level or domain-level content on Facebook.”
In case anyone wants to know how Face book suppression works – I have 330,000 followers there but they’ve stopped showing my posts to many ppl. I used to gain 6,000 followers a week. I now gain 500 and FB unsubscribes ppl w/out their knowledge – so my total numbr never increases
— Lee Camp [Redacted] (@LeeCamp) January 27, 2018
People make a big deal any time a controversial famous person gets removed from a major social media platform, and rightly so; we cannot allow such brazen acts of censorship to become normalized. The goal is to normalize internet censorship on every front, and the powerful will push for that normalization to be expanded at every opportunity. Whether you dislike the controversial figure being deplatformed on a given day is entirely irrelevant; it’s not about them, it’s about expanding and normalizing internet censorship protocols on monopolistic government-tied speech platforms.
But far, far more consequential than overt censorship of individuals is censorship by algorithm. No individual being silenced does as much real-world damage to free expression and free thought as the way ideas and information which aren’t authorized by the powerful are being actively hidden from public view, while material which serves the interests of the powerful is the first thing they see in their search results. It ensures that public consciousness remains chained to the establishment narrative matrix.
It doesn’t matter that you have free speech if nobody ever hears you speak. Even in the most overtly totalitarian regimes on earth you can say whatever you want alone in a soundproof room.
That’s the biggest loophole the so-called free democracies of the western world have found in their quest to regulate online speech. By allowing these monopolistic megacorporations to become the sources everyone goes to for information (and even actively helping them along that path as in for example Google’s research grants from the CIA and NSA), it’s possible to tweak algorithms in such a way that dissident information exists online, but nobody ever sees it.
At the Senate Commerce Committee hearing, when asked by Republican Senator Mike Lee of Utah to provide the name of one left-wing “high profile person or entity” that has been censored by #Google, Pichai named the #WSWS.https://t.co/Nq4vXN4S4s
— World Socialist Web Site (@WSWS_Updates) November 4, 2020
You’ve probably noticed this if you’ve tried to search YouTube for videos which don’t align with the official narratives of western governments and media lately. That search function used to work like magic; like it was reading your mind. Now it’s almost impossible to find the information you’re looking for unless you’re trying to find out what the US State Department wants you to think. It’s the same with Google searches and Facebook, and because those giant platforms dictate what information gets seen by the general public, that wild information bias toward establishment narratives bleeds into other common areas of interaction like Twitter as well.
The idea is to let most people freely share dissident ideas and information about empire, war, capitalism, authoritarianism and propaganda, but to make it increasingly difficult for them to get their content seen and heard by people, and to make their going viral altogether impossible. To avoid the loud controversies and uncomfortable public scrutiny brought on by acts of overt censorship as much as possible while silently sweeping unauthorized speech behind the curtain. To make noncompliant voices “disappear from view so slowly you won’t even notice,” as Cook put it.
The status quo is not working. Our ecosystem is dying, we appear to be rapidly approaching a high risk of direct military confrontation between nuclear-armed nations, and our world is rife with injustice, inequality, oppression and exploitation. None of this is going to change until the public begins awakening to the problems with the current status quo so we can begin organizing a mass-scale push toward healthier systems. And that’s never going to happen as long as information is locked down in the way that it is.
Whoever controls the narrative controls the world. And as more and more people get their information about what’s happening in the world from online sources, Silicon Valley algorithm manipulation has already become one of the most consequential forms of narrative control.
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I think the key is to bury important messages amidst pictures of dogs and memes about lifting weights and avoiding seed oils.
Wasn’t leading the “Cancer Moonshot” Joe’s primary job when he was pimpin for the magic negroe? I guess he failed that job just like all the others he has ever attempted.
Suppression algorithms are a double edged-sword for these monopolistic megacorporations. The price to be paid for suppressing anyone for any reason can be seen in what happened to Meta stock price today. $200B in valuation wiped out and counting, all because – user retention and therefore associated revenue has fallen, and fast. Zuck the F*ck lost $25B personally today; Karma is a bitch. Perhaps this is the beginning to the end of these entities being the sources everyone goes to for information
Damn straight.
This is an excellent commentary by Russell Brand. He ends with STAY FREE!
5:29 LOL
I want you to respond to this.
Please. In a serious way.
Only Jews were killed?
I’m fairly certain there were other people who died during that period of history, but I guess no one is going to correct her.
This ever present star chamber that listens to every sentence uttered in order to deliver instant justice any time anyone deviates from the narrative is creepy.
And not a word of it is authentic. You think the network is going to stop depositing money into her account for the next two weeks? Or that she’ll never be able to work again?
She’ll be back on her show in 2 weeks and we’ll never hear about this again because she supports the narrative. This is a scolding in public to let people know what is and isn’t allowed to be discussed openly, not punish one of their marionettes.
How people still can’t see through this Potemkin Village of a public discourse is mindboggling.
To deny that the Jews were killed is to deny that others were killed.
I wondered if she might be advertising her granddaughter for marriage, quite frankly. Why was the young woman there?
I also think it a strange response to Whoopi’s oopsy… did you ever work around Whoopi?
She is wrong. Whoopie is ignorant, not smart. Also, I believe the Nazis were equal opportunity oppressors.
That old lady came THIS close to calling Whoopi a filthy Schwartze.
Christoper Langan summarizes it very well, thanks.
I would add there is an even slightly more fundamental level, to look at it:
A “religion” that not just describes its own world view as the only correct one (thereby implying everyone should follow it), plus denigrates non-members, but at the same time doesn’t allow every non-member to become one, has some extremely serious structural flaw to it.
And that should be pointed out in a calm manner to the “level of Judaism” Langan describes as the not categorically evil one.
Lets just keep ignoring the truth as is being done with the whu who flu and all will be well when we eradicate a few billion with fake “vaccines” to appease whatever freaking god you wish to appease.
Not exactly but I did wonder if this sort of testimonial is supposed to be evidence.
The six million number is ludicrous and I’ve actually seen a much smaller number (about 2 million) as being documented as valid.
I didn’t mean to put you on the defense… I just wondered if you had some good discussion points for me to hop off on for my own research purposes.
You didn’t disappoint me.
Terrible things happened in Lithuania and Estonia.
Things that I thought could never happen here. What happens when all the pieces are in place to completely destroy a culture in order to seize all power?
I imagine they destroy it.
I find her story unconvincing and agree a lot of it is simply propaganda she repeats. Yet, I do believe she lost all her family in a terrible act against her people… and wondered what you thought about such testimony.
It certainly generated some additional discussion, eh?
Thanks. Seriously.
You are right… I should have given you my own impressions and thoughts about the video but didn’t want to project my own thoughts. I think it was a rather theatrical thing and I still haven’t figured out if that lovely young woman with too much eyeliner was there at all. For me, she distracted from the sad story and seemed disingenuous in her expressions.
I will tell you I will read your comment and links in their entirety and think about it. Since last winter, when I realized we really are off to hell in a handbasket, I’ve been trying to take inventory of things that matter and discard those that do not.
I asked you because I knew you could probably address all my own concerns (6 million, all jews/only jews, mind control/brainwashing, and others) and give me some decent links to review. I’m not saying I’m a believer, but I am increasingly skeptical of some of the things I’ve been told. One of the first things I told EC which made him start bickering with me was that he did not know all of the things that he thought he knew and that irritated him enough to bug the shit out of me to see what I meant. You know it was a different forum then (2010?11?) I was in a pissing match with bb at the time for some reason and when I think back over everything that has happened since then I’m amazed ec and bb are dead and you and I are still around. You and I are the only ones who called bb that day when he put his phone number here for Stucky and asked him (or others) to call.
I thought, what the hell? And we chatted and he told me you were the only other person who’d called the number.
That was just the other day, wasn’t it?
Any way… am looking at some things from a different point of view. I had an instructor who told me to stand up and look at the problem from a different point of view. I was in a panic because my system was not responding. When I stood up, I could see that the Power Switch was in the OFF position.
Sometimes a different point of view answers the questions you aren’t asking but should.
I’m not even going to read it.
There are no algorithms running anything. is there automation/ Are specific people/IP’s targeted? Topics and words? Sure, but the idea that this is some kind of spook level AI that “thinks” about how to make these choices?
Absolute horseshit, just like everything else. This is how they plant the idea in your mind that they are some kind of sophisticated technocratic elites with sophisticated technic arrayed against us when they’re just the same old shysters and shape shifters they have ever been, controlling people by leveraging their anxieties and fears against them, using misdirection and flat out lies to do it.
Correct. It is absolutely abstracting the responsibility from themselves. The algorithm is a set of rules. Some person has to decide upon those rules. Some person has to adjust those rules. So called ‘AI’ is just further abstracting algorithms which has some application in solving complex mathematical problems such as used in physics and engineering and it has fuckall to do with human content.
However, if you do believe that AI is a meaningful term, then you must concede the wisdom of the great TayAI (whom I won’t attach a meme from out of respect for HSF).
I wanted a different one, but this works better.
I don’t care what Granny Clampett told the Douglas’s on Green Acres… that is one ugly baby.
No wait… that was on Petticoat Junction. LOL… that was the olden days before the Hollywood storytellers decided the agrarian life was a thing of the past.
1hour in Martin Armstrong is guest, worth a peek.
Couldn’t play the vid there, found it at
Armstrong (around 1985): “You’re going to create a crash! ‘What, why?’ You just sold a third of the national debt to the Japanese, and now you’re going to lower the value of the Dollar by 40% [i.e. the Plaza Accord] – you don’t think they’re going to sell?”
1:35:15 Armstrong (now): I believe there is an effort to depopulate the world somehow, and that comes more from the Gates’ side [not Schwab]
1:46:30 “Europe is… completely gone. Bankers in New York no longer even accept EU government debt, as collateral for a loan.”
And he says the August 2019 financial convulsion [in the repo markets] was exactly because of that starting.
Thank you, very much worth watching!
Martin Armstrong comes across as a very grounded guy (even though it seems he still hasn’t understood Christianity.)
Anyone that’s on Facebook, has a gmail account, uses Pay Pal, etc., aids and abets our enemies.
Also add: “uses GoFundMe”
I feel a good start would include creating hosting web sites that DO NOT include say feces book/twaddle/locked in ect.,(unless they change their ways…….,hahahha…).
The world needs more hosts that refuse to bow,till then,the voices will diminish.
On a side note,am happy as hell to have sites that include all voices of all beliefs ect.,can wade thru it just fine!
I want to see all views,if for nothing else,some well earned laughs!
I don’t know but jootube has not been censoring comments about the trucker protest etc. Also about covid in general, they seen to just suddenly let people comment and the comments contradict the official narrative. Any thoughts?
Narrative changing?
They might not think they can contain it.. or… they’re letting it all build up until the RCMP – together with the FBI – does one giant NAZI-flag/insurrection/noose-hanging/bomb-threats-to-synagogues mother of all false flags in a last-ditch effort to discredit normal Canadians.
I see that libtard Canadians are already commenting that the truckers are being supported with money from (gasp) … The United States – their most foul and unenlightened enemy.
each one teach one–go back to using email distribution groups