Social media: 'Disinformation' vs. independence

By Walt Peretto 

A New York Times article from August 23 titled Google Deletes 39 YouTube Channels Linked to Iranian Influence Operation stated that two days before the Google deletions, Facebook deactivated 652 accounts suspected of being linked to “disinformation campaigns” by Iran and Russia. With Google and Facebook’s ties to Western intelligence agencies and their track record of disinfo, such accusations against Iran and Russia appear to be reminiscent of Orwellian doublespeak.

These acts of blatant censorship are a reaction to the receding influence of the Western corporate mainstream media that no longer has a monopoly on news and information since the advent of the internet. Social media is now under increasing attack as more and more people turn to ‘alternative’ sources of information. While most of us in the West grew up believing that our press was free and independent of government, we now realize that the mainstream media is primarily the propaganda arm of a multi-generational campaign to establish a one-world system of governance by pathological elite who hold de facto control over the political processes and foreign policy.

Social media has become a vehicle of information sharing for the common people, but at the same time it’s also useful as an information gathering tool for intelligence agencies. The open-to-the-public forums which are the basis of social media are a potential threat to those who seek monopolistic control over the flow of news and information. The targeting of Iran, accused of being a source of ‘disinformation’ on social media, makes perfect sense since Iran has remained independent of the West and its globalist agenda. The Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB), the main target of this latest censorship, is arguably one of the world’s largest news and information networks that is independent of the Western propaganda and disinformation systems.

Despite the growing availability of factually based news and information found within ‘alternative’ and social media, there are millions of people who remain trustful of traditional news sources like ABC, CBS, NBC, BBC, CBC, Fox, Charter Communications, etc.  However, their audiences and readership is dwindling as more and more people are waking up to reality and breaking free from these now exposed sources of disinformation. As this trend continues, those who seek the return of monopolistic control of information are taking measures to slow down ‘alternative’ sources through harassment and censorship.

Those who control the issuance of money use this power to buy influence in government and media and are now attempting to censor any information that calls into question their ‘official’ narratives of world events. However, it is important to understand that the ‘alternative’ media is also the playground of the Western propaganda machine via controlled opposition and trolling within social media. There are also a number of big names in the alternative media who espouse mostly truthful information only to embrace the ‘official’ narratives of the most potentially damning events. A prime example is famed academic Noam Chomsky who for many decades has been a leading critic of belligerent and illegal US foreign policy, yet he upholds the official government narratives of 9/11 and the JFK assassination despite mounting evidence that both ‘official’ narratives are physically impossible.

Independent journalists who have remained uncompromised in the ‘alternative media’ are often disrupted and now censored in some cases. Live streams are often interrupted, YouTube channels are demonetized and sometimes shut down, Facebook debate groups are trolled by people paid to conflate legitimate independent research and analysis with Flat-Earth and lizard people fantasies in an attempt to muddy the waters of legitimate research. The result in an alternative media that is infiltrated, while the mainstream media remains tightly controlled. Until the pathological elites can coerce the masses to submit to RFID chip implanting, they will likely encourage social media as a means of surveillance and gathering personal information while targeting those courageous people who use social media to disseminate truthful information that is backed up by legitimate independent investigation, research, and analysis.

Disclaimer:

The opinion expressed in the text solely reflects that of the author and does not necessarily belong to Press TV.

Walt Peretto is an American writer, researcher, analyst, and sociopolitical psychologist. He is a regular contributor to Press TV and he writes for several online news magazines. He is also working on a book that will introduce the groundwork for sociopolitical psychology which is the study of the behaviors behind social systems and their interactions.

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