The dangers of over dependence on the services of corporate internet monopolies in activism and political dissent

international | anti-capitalism | opinion/analysis Tuesday November 07, 2017 23:45 by Guy Fawkes

Given recent behaviour of google and facebook, Now more than ever, activists need to reduce their addiction and dependence on these corporate websites to disseminate their message and store their data.

I have been saying for many years that activists should maintain
as much independence as possible from corporate internet tools while disseminating their message
and raising funds.

It is far too easy for a corporate site to make a troublesome group or writer vanish overnight and
lose all of their material, funding and their audience, as, for example, Shell to Sea found when their facebook account was suddenly suspended. Or as wikileaks found when paypal froze their account.

The fact is these large internet Corporations are in bed with western imperialists. They get tacit government political support for massive tax breaks and deliberately created tax loopholes that enable them to pay < 2% tax rates in vassal states like Ireland and in return, whenever called upon, they do the bidding of their US masters by demonising the likes of Julian assange, RT etc and discouraging defunding and in general "disappearing" any individual or website which writes or posts articles that are not in lockstep with corporate and western imperialist interests.

There is a concerted effort currently underway by these corporations on behalf of the US,UK and EU to get RT off the air as they have presented information suppressed and ignored by western media and have allowed people to consider an alternative viewpoint which contrasts with the western propaganda version of events.

Another example targetted recently is the well known WSWS website
http://www.wsws.org/

which has been "disappeared" by alterations to the google search algorithm which has a huge effect on traffic to a website and consequent revenue. You can read all about that here:

"Google escalates blacklisting of left-wing web sites and journalists"
http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2017/10/20/goog-o20.html

and here:

"An open letter to Google: Stop the censorship of the Internet! Stop the political blacklisting of the World Socialist Web Site!"
http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2017/08/25/pers-a25.html

Another example, the website "counterpunch", has always provided interesting articles questioning the status quo by high profile writers. Now this site too is at risk.
https://www.counterpunch.org/

This recent article by a writer CJ Hopkins has highlighted how the recent behaviour of these corporate sites can insidiously undermine and eventually lead to the closure of crucial high quality alternative news sites:

"Who’s Afraid of Corporate COINTELPRO?"
https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/11/03/whos-afraid-of-...lpro/

Facebook, twitter and Google represent a serious threat to freedom of speech as between them they wield far too much power to shape our reality and they have all been caught abusing that power in concert with the amoral government of the US.

the US government and these giant internet companies through whom they wield an alarming totalitarian control over our very thoughts and what ideas and viewpoints we are allowed to be exposed to, which, when coupled with the techniques and programs of the NSA and CIA revealed by Edward Snowden and wikileaks, represent a level of surveillance and thought control that historical villains like the stasi secret police could only dream of in their wildest fantasies.