Looks like the State Dept finally rang them up and said they were Roooosian propaganda or a threat to NATO security and of course they buckled. Only surprise is this didn't happen sooner but it shows the boot is falling, the clampdown is rolling. Ukraine has provided a great excuse to consolidate media control.
Back in WW2 the military had an office for controlling the press, people like to think that was in the past, a situation of special total war but with Ukraine that's coming back. Social media and tech companies obediently do what they're asked to by the government in the vague and nebulous name of national security or defending democracy or fighting disinformation or whatever and this isn't going to go away once Russia wins in Ukraine, it's part of the collapse, the tightening of the leash, to prevent counter-narratives that explain the decay of capital and empire. Russiagate was the first pretext, the real beginning of moving from just having intelligence analysts doing "narrative shaping" on social media sites to censorship, deplatforming, algorithmic suppression, a duty to combat "misinformation" as deemed by the bourgeois press subservient to the American empire.
We're not a large target right now but we could become one. Most large hosting companies talk up free speech but will buckle when Uncle Sam comes knocking, especially when he can threaten them with legal problems for other more profitable, dubiously legal content they host unless they comply on this.
Looks like the State Dept finally rang them up and said they were Roooosian propaganda or a threat to NATO security and of course they buckled. Only surprise is this didn't happen sooner but it shows the boot is falling, the clampdown is rolling. Ukraine has provided a great excuse to consolidate media control.
Back in WW2 the military had an office for controlling the press, people like to think that was in the past, a situation of special total war but with Ukraine that's coming back. Social media and tech companies obediently do what they're asked to by the government in the vague and nebulous name of national security or defending democracy or fighting disinformation or whatever and this isn't going to go away once Russia wins in Ukraine, it's part of the collapse, the tightening of the leash, to prevent counter-narratives that explain the decay of capital and empire. Russiagate was the first pretext, the real beginning of moving from just having intelligence analysts doing "narrative shaping" on social media sites to censorship, deplatforming, algorithmic suppression, a duty to combat "misinformation" as deemed by the bourgeois press subservient to the American empire.
We're not a large target right now but we could become one. Most large hosting companies talk up free speech but will buckle when Uncle Sam comes knocking, especially when he can threaten them with legal problems for other more profitable, dubiously legal content they host unless they comply on this.