Internet Censorship by Politically Correct: Example of the Guardian, UK

Systematic and injurious “pre-moderation”

The internet today isn’t what Tim Berners-Lee pictured when he co-invented with other CERN fellows the World Wide Web nearly three decades ago at CERN (the first WWW office was actually in France, as CERN straddles the border next to Geneva; most of the LHC accelerator is in France, fed by French nukes).

Berners-Lee said the web is “at a tipping point” as it faces threats like market concentration, data breaches and so-called “fake news.”

“For a long time, 20 years, I thought all I had to do was keep it, just keep it free and open and people will do wonderful things. Then in fact if you look and talk to people on the street now there’s been a big change. I think this has been been a tipping point.”

Berners-Lee is concerned by user frustration with ads and privacy, hate speech and fake news. Corporate giants like Google and Facebook have to be broken because of “danger of concentration.” Facebook is famous for banning artwork which popes paid for centuries ago, on the ground of pornography. Verily shouldn’t it be Facebook which is viewed as pornographic? Isn’t it Zuckerberg’s wealth from spying on We The people, the definition of obscene? Facebook is thus worse than the Middle Age Vatican, in a very important ways No problem? Of course a huge problem: Facebook is teaching the youth that, to be hypocritical to the point of idiocy is Politically Correct.

Internet Censorship 2014. Not what the self congratulating world ravaging Politically Correct would expect….

“Sir Tim”: “To tackle any problem, we must clearly outline and understand it. I broadly see three sources of dysfunction affecting today’s web:

 

• Deliberate, malicious intent, such as state-sponsored hacking and attacks, criminal behaviour, and online harassment.

• System design that creates perverse incentives where user value is sacrificed, such as ad-based revenue models that commercially reward clickbait and the viral spread of misinformation.

• Unintended negative consequences of benevolent design, such as the outraged and polarised tone and quality of online discourse.

While the first category is impossible to eradicate completely, we can create both laws and code to minimize this behaviour, just as we have always done offline. The second category requires us to redesign systems in a way that change incentives. And the final category calls for research to understand existing systems and model possible new ones or tweak those we already have.

You can’t just blame one government, one social network or the human spirit. Simplistic narratives risk exhausting our energy as we chase the symptoms of these problems instead of focusing on their root causes. To get this right, we will need to come together as a global web community.”

The source of nastiness on the Internet are often the same as the old sources. Simply, nastiness is amplified more. Quite a few Internet outlets who claim to be left (or perfectly balanced) have banned me, no reason given (except a major philosophy site which weirdly accused me of “fantastic” thinking). PC thinking is a calamity. But it existed in 1950: then PC was “Parti Communiste”, and everybody “left” was supposed to adore “Comrade Stalin” without reservations whatsoever. Problems appeared in the French delegation when, at the world congress the French delegation headed by Irene Curie walked out in protest after the Soviet worthy called from the tribune J-P Sartre a “dactylographic hyena“…

An example is the British daily The Guardian (the most interesting UK paper in my opinion). As I came across one more of their impudent warnings to me today, I sent them this:  

My comments to The Guardian have been “pre-moderated” since times immemorial (a decade?). I don’t know why: I seem pretty reasonable to me, and I strive to always be. I can’t imagine a particular incident. Wisdom is actually what I love and construct. I do not appreciate to be extended the dubious honor of this systematic, private 1984 pre-moderation: have all my comments to the Guardian in the last decade been censored? I do not know if a single one of my comments have ever been published. It is rather strange, as I search for knowledge and wisdom, to be told, every time I look at comments in the Guardian, that mine are presumably so vile, and dangerous, that the public has to be protected from them.

I wish you find the time and motivation to consider this matter. Having contempt and condemnation for individuals, unexplained, unjustified, is no way to make a happy, intelligent, debating planet.

This is not the first time I point this to The Guardian. I got no answer. The New York Times banned me for a decade, and reinstated after changing editors, and publishes now most of my comments. The New York Times had been apparently unhappy with my opposition to the Iraq invasion. But that error is now less popular than it used to be.

It is my sorrowful duty to have to point out occasionally censorship, in traditional or social media. I do this with any entity I perceive as systematically abusive.

As the Brexit tragicomedy enfolds, the British media, including the Guardian, should ponder whether the idiosyncratic, amused penchant they fancy for systematic bias (in this case against yours truly) is not the deepest cause of this mental derangement.

Sincerely yours,

Patrice Ayme

Tags: CERN, Internet