Re:Facebook and Google pressured EU experts to soften fake n...
by Amezarak on Tuesday May 21, 2019 @06:10PM
(#19975647)
It was never any different. Fake news and internationally driven propaganda are as old as time.
The reason modern actors are suddenly so upset about it is that the state-media complex in Western countries had, briefly, an unusual amount of control and wherewithal to spread their preferred propaganda thanks to the consolidation of media networks and television.
Go back to the Constitutional Convention and a major concern was rumors spread by ‘designing men’ who were subverting the government, and they had real-world examples there were referring to. Go back to Rome, where fake news sometimes got a lot of people killed, and changed the whole course of history. Go back to the 1940s when the British government spent a lot of time in money on a massive, secret campaign to crush US isolationism in our elections and spread propaganda that would ensure US intervention in WWII.
This is not a new justification for censorship. It’s a very, very old one.
The reason modern actors are suddenly so upset about it is that the state-media complex in Western countries had, briefly, an unusual amount of control and wherewithal to spread their preferred propaganda thanks to the consolidation of media networks and television.
Go back to the Constitutional Convention and a major concern was rumors spread by ‘designing men’ who were subverting the government, and they had real-world examples there were referring to. Go back to Rome, where fake news sometimes got a lot of people killed, and changed the whole course of history. Go back to the 1940s when the British government spent a lot of time in money on a massive, secret campaign to crush US isolationism in our elections and spread propaganda that would ensure US intervention in WWII.
This is not a new justification for censorship. It’s a very, very old one.