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Culture War Roundup for the week of September 2, 2024

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Rather than goverment vs corporations it is more about governments and companies who align agenda wise, although granted part of this process includes the goverment requesting censoring, or puttings its own people in charge.

I see it as a broader network/faction.

We are entering an increasing phase of authoritarianism. The Democrats certainly and probably several republicans, possibly even a larger share of republicans than in general, on the issue of speech critical of Jews, are after European style decimation of freedom of speech.

Moreover, the existence of centralized platforms, including platforms like this very forum where someone can decide to censor or ban people at will, it self represents a power grab against freedom of speech in a way. There is also the other side, where it also allows more communication. But meat space did have some less constraints.

I believe there is a direct relationship with moderators banning people and this being celebrated and with governments imprisoning people for hate speech.

So I see it as a struggle between figures like Musk, Durov, Torba, and a totalitarian far left faction. With someone like Musk possibly somewhat compromising with them in some areas and opposing them in others.

Another facet of this is technology which helps enable centralization of power, as also seen with A.I. models being different variations of super woke which makes it easier to take peoples freedom's away. Although if the technology was utilized differently, it could have had different effects. But the possibility of technology being used to centralize and create a totalitarian system is there and it is taken advantage of. It means we are facing a techno-totalitarian threat that is unprecedented.

Like the faction against dissent includes people in goverment and in corporations, those in favor of existence of dissenting platforms should include people both outside the goverment, but also people who ought to take influence within governance, as either legislature or executives. That way, if Brazil wants to get rid of X, but Z other country and politicians like Musk, then that raises the pressure against Brazil.