A new red army is here: Widespread secret suppression scales thought police to levels not seen since the days of Nazis and Communists, and it is time to speak up about it.
Today I discovered by accident that I was automatically unsubscribed from a bunch of Substacks that I had subscribed to recently, including yours. Not sure if it was a glitch, but I'm glad to be following your research and anti-censorship work again. Thanks for writing this.
I'm glad to hear people talking about this, I thought I was crazy the first time I noticed on Reddit that some comments I could see were invisible to everyone else. Since then I've been shouting into the void for the past year looking for someone else who is concerned.
Invisible moderation removes the possibility of accountability. Removing accountability makes abuse inevitable.
Worse, since humans are social creatures we are strongly influenced by our communities. If everyone around you believes something happened & no-one disputes it (except maybe one crazy who is easily disputed) you will believe it too. Shadow moderation allows people to craft this artificial consensus & can absolutely be used to manipulate individuals & groups.
Moderators & tech companies absolutely have the power to shape your experience of an issue, which will shape your understanding of said issue, which will shape your opinion of said issue & finally your actions, from voting to terrorism.
Nothing like the good ol' red scare switcheroo in an article delivered straight to the users of a tool combating corporate capitalist censorship. A true classic.
Whoa, that's good to know -- thank you for telling me that! I've been having some pretty bizarre experiences on social media platforms since 2021. I'm a local journalist / frequent FOIA requester. During normal times, that would be nothing unusual, but it seems to have landed me on some sort of digital shit-list in recent years.
This afternoon I noticed my Substack reader had been unusually quiet for about two weeks, except for the five or so paid writers I pay for, and after looking into it, I discovered I'd been unsubscribed from about 15 blogs. I assumed it was a glitch but now I'm not so sure.
Big AI seems to be on this path as well. Bots are flooding the internet and conversation about it seems to be universally banned. People getting censored and flamed for discussing the idea that GPT4 is dumber than it was at launch.
![[Removed]: The Real Censorship is Secret Suppression](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/e_trim:10:white/e_trim:10:transparent/h_56,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F4e3bd729-0bba-433a-b935-5a4b52a1ea7b_1278x337.png)
Hate Online Censorship? It's Way Worse Than You Think.
Today I discovered by accident that I was automatically unsubscribed from a bunch of Substacks that I had subscribed to recently, including yours. Not sure if it was a glitch, but I'm glad to be following your research and anti-censorship work again. Thanks for writing this.
I'm glad to hear people talking about this, I thought I was crazy the first time I noticed on Reddit that some comments I could see were invisible to everyone else. Since then I've been shouting into the void for the past year looking for someone else who is concerned.
Invisible moderation removes the possibility of accountability. Removing accountability makes abuse inevitable.
Worse, since humans are social creatures we are strongly influenced by our communities. If everyone around you believes something happened & no-one disputes it (except maybe one crazy who is easily disputed) you will believe it too. Shadow moderation allows people to craft this artificial consensus & can absolutely be used to manipulate individuals & groups.
Moderators & tech companies absolutely have the power to shape your experience of an issue, which will shape your understanding of said issue, which will shape your opinion of said issue & finally your actions, from voting to terrorism.
Nothing like the good ol' red scare switcheroo in an article delivered straight to the users of a tool combating corporate capitalist censorship. A true classic.
Whoa, that's good to know -- thank you for telling me that! I've been having some pretty bizarre experiences on social media platforms since 2021. I'm a local journalist / frequent FOIA requester. During normal times, that would be nothing unusual, but it seems to have landed me on some sort of digital shit-list in recent years.
This afternoon I noticed my Substack reader had been unusually quiet for about two weeks, except for the five or so paid writers I pay for, and after looking into it, I discovered I'd been unsubscribed from about 15 blogs. I assumed it was a glitch but now I'm not so sure.
hope you realize that private companies aren't the same thing as governments lol
Great post Robert.
Big AI seems to be on this path as well. Bots are flooding the internet and conversation about it seems to be universally banned. People getting censored and flamed for discussing the idea that GPT4 is dumber than it was at launch.