Opinion | The US 'Big Tech' censorship regime

By Tom Fowdy

"Stay informed: this tweet links to a China state-affiliated media website"- is what you will have read if you see this article posted on Twitter, a warning from the site. It's a sign of the times. Last night Twitter banned former UN weapons inspector and military expert under the guise of "harassment" for a tweet which was not in fact harassment, but challenged the established western narrative over the events in Bucha. Scott Ritter's suspension was a huge loss, yet he's not the only one. Scores of accounts seeking to provide alternative perspectives of the conflict in Ukraine have also been banned in recent weeks, amounting to what is an effectively growing censorship regime over the war enforced by Silicon Valley: "Big Tech".

If accounts are not banned, they can be swiftly labeled with tags such as "Russian State Affiliated Media" as what has happened to British politician George Galloway. The labeling serves to suppress them in twitter's algorithm and removes them from search results. Likewise, when I logged into my Google AdSense account this morning, I also received a general announcement saying: "Due to the war in Ukraine, we will pause monetization of content that exploits, dismisses or condones the war"- or in other words, challenges the popular narrative. This censorship regime is not in fact entirely new, but an evolution of an existing precedent over the past few years which first began to target right-wing and far-right figures, but has then slowly expanded to anyone strongly challenging "official narratives" so to speak

Trump and Russiagate

The election of Donald Trump as President of the United States in 2016 was a turning point in the relationship between "big tech" firms and governments, with social media only having boomed in the past 7 years or so proceeding it and had a revolutionary impact on the dissemination of information. Trump's against the odds election came as a huge shock and upheaval to the US political system, which led to Democrats weaponizing a narrative against him that his victory was a product of Russian interference in the election through the medium of Facebook.

This popular, albeit obviously misleading narrative, quickly ignited a barrage of scrutiny from American politicians towards social media firms such as Facebook, Google and Twitter which demanded they deeper regulate their content and flush out "misinformation" which seemingly gave advantages to politicians such as Trump, putting pressure on these platforms who had otherwise supported free speech. In the following years, social media firms began to rewrite their policies and slowly started to deplatform individuals accused of hate speech and misinformation, but also those accused of "inauthentic behavior" and deemed to be "foreign actors" acting against the West.

For the time being, there was little sympathy for those targeted as they were indeed people on the political fringes and extremes. For example, the notorious English far-right figure Tommy Robinson, U.S Conspiracy theorist radio host Alex Jones, and so on. What was ignored however, is that over time the walls would slowly close in more and more with each new "turning point" and the criteria of who was eligible to be "de-platformed" broadened in turn. With this process having been initiated with Trump's ascendency, the next turning point then came with his demise. After Trump accused the U.S election of being rigged in 2021 and incited a riot against the U.S capitol building, the President himself was banned from social media across the board.

Whilst this can be defended by arguing "nobody is above the law"- the flipside of such a move was that it also meant "nobody was safe" with de-facto policies emerging leaning towards the banning of anyone who critiques mainstream narratives in the moment of crisis. This process has been accelerated by the fact Twitter has partnered with vested interest US government-funded firms such as the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) who of course steered it towards banning innocent people as "Chinese bot" accounts. The war in Ukraine would prove to be the next decisive point of expansion of this growing regime, hence as above notes, the list of prominent accounts being banned for questioning certain narratives is growing. Twitter doesn't seem to make it obvious, but rather looks for a "casus belli" excuse to do so that it maintains the façade of free speech, hence Scott Ritter was dubiously accused of "harassment". This is likely to get worse as the war rumbles on.

This reveals a grim reality, whilst extreme fear and paranoia are espoused daily over the claim that China is able to export censorship beyond its borders on "sensitive" issues, in reality US big tech are already doing just that. These Silicon Valley firms are increasingly enforcing and policing a US-led narrative upon the entire world and crushing alternative perspectives. The people who were so adamant about democracy and freedom in the case of China seem unwilling to acknowledge what is happening or speak up for it. This is a scary new reality, and diversification from these monopoly firms is urgently needed.

The author is a well-seasoned writer and analyst with a large portfolio related to China topics, especially in the field of politics, international relations and more. He graduated with an Msc. in Chinese Studies from Oxford University in 2018.

The views do not necessarily reflect those of DotDotNews.

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