Censorship and privacy (2016)
This is a very old rant I wrote in 2016. Before the Cambridge anaylitica scandal became public. Long before today, when people are more aware of the dire state of the world than ever, and Facebook's public image has fallen out of favor.
There are two possibilities here. Either we have been caught in an information bubble so restrictive that it appears that some types of news are being censored from us. The other possibility here, the scary one, is that these companies are specifically censoring the news. The latter one is particularly interesting to look at now that Facebook explicitly blocks entire pages of organizations that support a specific political platform. Or when you could not upload that one anti-DNC photo to Facebook.
I mean I totally understand why we don't think it's that big of a deal, even if it's true. One could argue (you probably will) that people who care about news should just go to a news site and catch up on world events. But what about the people who don't? The people who don't know that there is something to care for? It's one thing to drive your platform to make sure Hillary Clinton gets the presidency over Donald Trump, it's another thing to actively censor out one of the biggest humanitarian crisis of our generation just because. I know everyone has their priorities: some people have to focus on their careers so that they can make the world a better place, some people would rather watch funny 9GAG videos than look at things that may displease or discomfort them, etc.; sadly, some people actively just dismisses that something this cruel might be happening. Again it is understandable why we are so quick to dismiss that people are being tortured, imprisoned, killed, and their lives destroyed when our most trustworthy and credible “friend” censors them, damaging the credibility of those reports to the general public.
I have a problem with Hillary Clinton, but I don't care that much when sites like Facebook and Google bends the support toward her. But I do have a problem when they get caught promoting pro-occupation and blocking media sites that cover the other side of the wall. These are lives of people we are talking about. This is about children with no childhoods or a promise of a better future. This is about people who know that the world has forsaken them, and they are totally right. Their story needs to be told. But it's all good because it was just a small mistake, oops.
Not even surprised anymore that so many people I know think that we are living in the most peaceful of times just because we are not stuck behind walls or being bombed every other day.
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