It is more and more apparent that the truth online, is almost impossible to find. Online platforms, like the dominant players, Twitter, X, Facebook, and Instagram are designed to provide you with a singular perspective, one that manipulates your thinking, while suggesting that free speech is paramount, all the while purveying lies and focusing your mental framework into a tighter and tighter pattern of thought.
When this is combined with powerful people whose focus is in regulating or controlling what you think, what you can say or not say, free speech becomes as a tenet of democracy, irrelevant. And now that the incoming government has allowed and embraced the richest man in the world and enabled him to enter the realm of regulation and governance from within government, he has the means to influence, purchase, and control what we can and cannot hear or say by silencing those he disagrees with. This enabling of platforms is so insidious that it promotes a singular message, all under the guise of free speech. In fact, truth and democracy itself are then put at risk.
For more than a decade, a very few extremely rich people have been allowed to foster disinformation and lies meant to essentially limit, and eventually control access to information. They control all the media that we read, hear and watch. Algorithms have been designed to reward one’s online experience in such a way that it focuses on eliminating alternate points of view and independence of thought from that which they foster.
Finding spaces in the electronic online filled with misinformation, disinformation and targeted messaging where truth is spoken, written or presented is extremely difficult today. Most platforms are owned by very rich, influential and politically active individuals who want to influence what you think, how you reason and act. They intend to stop independence of thought and action. That is the plan of those who own the media we consume. And in so doing, they focus on enriching themselves in the process.
Knowing that, it becomes evermore important that one ask, “Who benefits”, when considering where you interact, listen or watch information being presented. We take free speech for granted, and not hate speech, yet more and more, what we hear is messaging, video and journalism meant to invalidate information that doesn’t fit with the individual or group who own the source of your information. What has occurred over the last two decades has been the manipulation and control of information in such a way that it moves the reader, viewer or listener to respond in a defined manner. To not do so, brings more disinformation and narrower control of what can be seen or found on that particular platform. Refusal by consumers to be influenced, invites being sanctioned, silenced or unable to post or interact with others.
And now we are at the intersection of government and media, so that only specific information that serves the administration or power in the role of governance can be consumed. It becomes insular, limiting what you hear, see, learn at schools and can find available online. When special interests control the media, and influence education as to what can be read, seen or discussed, control is near complete.
It is time to find independent media that seeks truth above all and allows its viewers, readers and online participants to learn, grow, and disseminate events and ideas in such a way that ALL can participate, without the fear of censorship, reprisal or threats. New platforms need to analyze input by trolls from these other bastions of disinformation intent on creating misinformation to pollute and limit the truth and its distribution.
One need only ask, who benefits from Facebook, Meta, from X, from Instagram, and the dozens of other online platforms? Are they echo chambers designed to provide you with one side of a story, to keep you focused on a narrative of their design? If so, seek independence and a breadth of ideas and influences. Be curious, be a critical thinker and one who seeks truth in information. Find sources of information where spin is not evident, read or view alternate sources of information and exercise a jaundiced, and soon, practiced eye to determine fact from fiction.
Now, more than ever, we need to avoid silos and echo chambers. We need to engage with information in such a way that we question and speak truth to power. For power wants to manipulate and control you.
It’s time to rebel. You are intelligent, capable of assimilating information and determining its veracity and value. Don’t be misled, or silenced, for that is how a lie is walked into the light and exposed.
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