Not everything is about “controlling” you, not everything is a “fake narrative”, the world isn’t out to censor you, and no, not every form of censorship is bad. Yes censorship is a slippery slope, but so is intellectual laziness.
1. https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/08/18/more-americ...
There's no simple answers here.
These are not remotely equivalent things, and I bristle every time I hear someone suggest it.
Corporations cannot solve every kind of problem, and some form of government is inevitable, necessary and desirable.
Maybe. If I quit Facebook, I can't messenger my loved ones anymore and my Oculus is now a lovely brick someone bought me for Christmas.
At a certain scale, the power dynamics start to look very similar. Governments still generally maintain a monopoly on violence, that's a big difference.
Generally. I think we can consider "Deported because your employer has no further use for you" a mostly-government-but-kind-of-weird-hand-in-glove-with-corporate-power blended category.
Synchronously, without video, using an interrupting device. And after that, bifurcated across about a half-dozen messaging services.
Facebook is the first system I've seen that actually has 100% of my friends and family reachable using a common protocol supporting text, audio, and video messaging. If I were to leave, I'd lose touch with about half the people I correspond with regularly. It's a hard sell.
That's a HUGE difference. You are describing inconveniences but you still have a choice to give up your Oculus etc if you want.
You don't have the choice to "ignore" the government the same way.
I hope you keep in mind that this puts you into a somewhat privileged position given that numerous people need to maintain accounts with Facebook for their job, their educational institutions, their landlord, or something else they cannot avoid. In quite a lot of countries on earth Facebook services (or their national analogues) are essentially equivalent to 'the internet'.
If you cannot recognize that difference, then may I politely suggest that you ponder the idea of "intellectual laziness".
Are they though? All 3 of these groups have been pushing for only their narrative to be heard. Any other voice is misinformation at best and disinformation at worst.
(a) the Hunter Biden laptop is likely a Russian ploy
(b) the Hunter Biden laptop was verified independently by journalists and colleagues
Which of the following represents misinformation:
(a) it is very curious that a global pandemic originated in the same location as a biosafety level 4 lab
(b) it was impossible that the virus originated from a lab and in fact it is xenophobic and racist to imply the virus originated in a lab
In both stories, Big Tech + Government + The Press all took swift and unified action towards the "approved" narrative.
However, the second point falls very very close to my area of expertise (biochem), so I'll humour you.
> (a) it is very curious that a global pandemic originated in the same location as a biosafety level 4 lab
The above statement actually contains no information: it is a bad faith / rhetorical statement. There are high security labs all around the world, particularly where there are people... so the odds that any event happens fairly close to one are fairly high.
> (b) it was impossible that the virus originated from a lab and in fact it is xenophobic and racist to imply the virus originated in a lab
This here conflates different issues in a disingenuous way. My expert opinion is that it is more likely to have emerged outside of a lab, but yes, it is also possible that the virus originated in a lab. The second part of your sentence is hysterically incorrect.
No, and in my experience this is not how things were presented. It _is_ misinformation to suggest that that is the likeliest explanation or to imply that we have a good reason to think so.
At a higher level, there's also the question of context, and the question of what the appropriate forum for such discussion is, and what is productive or non-productive geopolitically.
But it's not misinformation to float the idea and explore the possibility.
Tell that to the fact checkers and the social media companies that display the fact checks.