by Steve Brown, The Duran:
The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of this site. This site does not give financial, investment or medical advice.
It’s interesting that Matt Taibbi’s outing of the FBI’s (apparently) unlawful censorship of twitter accounts has not resulted in a wider conversation about google, which, by its conflict-of-interest ‘ownership’ of YouTube is the major oppressive and suppressive actor, regarding online speech and information.
TRUTH LIVES on at https://sgtreport.tv/
It is well known that google suppresses search results and even ‘disappears’ subjects and information that may counter whatever Surveillance State narrative that google wishes to push publicly. The public policies and narrative that google publicly enforces also extend to user accounts, by methods that most google users are not aware of, and which will be addressed later.
My anecdotal experience occurred several years ago when I contacted the family of Dr Victor Lukarevsky of “snow cats” fame Link: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/profiles/3XByWnnr69YN7nFn0F8MKMy/dr-victor-lukarevsky to assist a family member in setting-up a youtube channel, about the snow cats of Siberia. Of course Dr Lukarevsky and his family members are based in Russia, and even four years ago – long before the SMO – my contact with a Russian account in aid of the Siberian Lynx was enough to set off alarm bells within the google repression machine.
Just subsequent to my contact with Dr Lukarevsky via gmail, google locked my email account with a message that the account was blocked due to ‘suspicious activity’ whenever I attempted to login. Google being opaque, non-transparent and as suspect as the CIA In-Q-tel parent organization that assisted in creating it, Link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In-Q-Tel did not of course respond to my appeal, or provide any information at all about why my google account was suspended, including the youtube account created to aid the Siberian Lynx.
The hassle in terms of removing personal information and external linkages to my google account took many hours to remedy. A key learning was to never use google for anything security-related. Instead, I used google for ‘throwaway’ accounts, to access youtube, and to post reviews. Even then, my reviews were being shadow banned although the reviews fully complied with the google terms of service.
Investigating further it seems that shadow banning of google reviews is quite common. The content can be censored – google characterized as “made private”! — by algorithm filters, or human intervention. Perhaps that’s one reason google employed more than 164K “headcount” by the second quarter of 2022.
Even more insidious, google will link separate google accounts (created by one account holder) without permission or knowledge of the account holder. So if an account holder attempts to evade google’s online suppression by creating a new account, google will, via automated means, apply the same shadow ban and restrictions to the new account as existed with the old account. The account creator has no idea of course that this has occurred.*
For google to engage in this sort of gaming and suppression of user accounts is probably unlawful in the United States, but recall that fascism is the perfect marriage of the Corporation and State, as achieved by the USA many years ago. Ie there will be no federal or state opposition to google’s spying and surveillance, by the US political establishment.
Matt Taibbi’s work documenting the collusion of the federal government with twitter staff and contractors to censor political content critical of political class narrative in the collective west is now publicly known. An article with more about twitter-federal revolving-door online cop Stacia Cardille is here,
But Cardille is just one tiny cog in a federal surveillance and duplicity machine of huge proportion, with regard to potential illegal surveillance operations reporting on US citizens. A federal government surveillance operation where a bewildering array of private contractors aid and abet the federal authorities in that illegal surveillance, censorship, and intimidation of US citizens. But what’s surprising is the failure to highlight google as being central to the overall suppression of online dialogue and freedom of information.
There is no doubt that anti-Trust initiative has failed in the United States when google is allowed to own diverse major online media outlets, especially YouTube, and Playstore for smartphones. Google’s 164K+ employees have applied the same repressive Police State censorship to YouTube as to the google platform itself. An example of a video censored from YouTube is here: https://www.bitchute.com/video/VC8sA6AjdlTG/ but there are many thousands of video examples – perhaps millions? – more.
Now the major online corporates, via the Pentagon, contract to operations such as Newsguard, to further extend their control on what you, the reader, sees, hears and reads and just beware that phone contact from Sophia Tewa if you are a content provider!
Rapidly becoming a police state leveraging surveillance and censorship just as the former USSR once did — and which the United States denounced way back during the Cold War — FBI surveillance of US citizens has progressed far beyond that implemented by the FBI in the 1970’s during the notorious Hoover-Helms era.
Google has been factually shown to be a key player in the surveillance and suppression of online speech all over the globe – not just the former USA. As such, google should be investigated and prosecuted for its crimes. However, since the federal government of the USA now embodies the prefect marriage between the Corporation and State, it’s clear that will not happen.
*The only sure means to defeat such google account linkage (desktop/laptop) is by uninstalling google chrome and then clearing the registry (windows) of all chrome entries, with your desktop disconnected from the internet, and avoid logging in to google from your smartphone.
