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Some time ago I referred my readers to my rather extensive analysis on the TFF – the Transnational Foundation’s homepage – about social media and why I am reducing my use of Facebook, Twitter and Google to an absolute minimum. That was January 25.
Since then, two things have happened that make me even more sure that that decision was right: Facebook has announced that it has employed a former NATO information officer as its new intelligence chief. And I wrote on Facebook:
“From now on, Facebook will emulate the political profile of NATO, the Atlantic Council and other US foreign policy forces and potentially become an “intelligence” outfit. I’m glad TFF and I have cut down 90% and only use it as shop window for our articles. How do you feel about being used and censored this way?”
The next thing happened yesterday. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. – son of the man who was JFK’s brother and got killed too – had his Instagram account with 800 000 followers closed down. (Here NYT’s take on it, with not one critical or hesitant word…) For your information, the immensely popular Instagram is owned by Facebook. It argues that “We removed this account for repeatedly sharing debunked claims about the coronavirus or vaccines,” Facebook said, confirming the deletion of Kennedy’s hugely popular page. One must ask whether Facebook has qualified scientists in all areas to decide such things so categorically.
I’ve just written on Facebook and on Instagram:
obergphotographics
🆘 FacebookCensorship – Look up ❗
#FacebookCensorship#kennedy#RobergFKennedyjr#censorship
No matter what you think of this Kennedy, this is disgusting and disgraceful.
Simply unacceptable.
We need quality education on all levels to learn to distinguish between what is fake and what is not.
We do NOT need imbecile corporate nannies to decide what we must or must not read.
In addition, Facebook has long practised censorship. And lately, it has tied itself to NATO by cooperating with the Atlantic Council and just having employed a former NATO press officer as its chief of intelligence.
And no politicians intervene against this corporate destruction of the freedom of expression! They obviously want it.
I have no knowledge about vaccines, but even if he is dead wrong this is not the way to treat a very knowledgeable and passioned man who is doing no harm beyond trying – like everybody else – to spread the message he believes in out of conviction. He is no trickster and no conspiracy theorist in my view.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is a very respected environmental researcher, activist, lawyer, professor and author and has won several cases against corporations which pollute the environment. Here a background. He is intensely engaged in children’s health issues – that he considers the most important problem in the United States of today.
The first time I encountered his work was around the conflict in and with Syria. He has written one of the best analyses I know of about the Middle East in general and Syria in particular because, as he says, his father Robert F. Kennedy who was killed when Junior was only 14 years old was killed by an Arab man and he wanted to understand the Arab world. Here for you to read, Why the Arabs don’t want us in Syria from 2016.
As I said, I cannot judge his doings when it comes to vaccines, and he may be dead wrong. But I can also see from his very impressive life-long activities why his consistent criticism of corporate America, the White House and the lack of real change for the global environment has made him a hated man in powerful circles.
And I am not in doubt on which side Facebook and the other big media corporations would be standing in that conflict.
My main point is very simple.
If we are to have censorship – and that is already practised in some forms in some countries around blasphemy, instigating hate against certain people, racist and anti-semitism statements – that must be for parliaments or other democratically elected bodies to decide with a view to the common good and not be determined by even less than twenty men sitting at the centres of Facebook, Twitter, Google and other media – to paraphrase Gandhi:
Note
On February 11, 2021, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. responded to Instagram/Facebook’s decision.
Read his very reasonable arguments here.
A very pressing point indeed!
Kære Jan,
tak for din principielle holdning til dette emne.
Selvom jeg ikke er en public person med tusindvis af følgere, har jeg også i starten af januar valgt at lukke min personlige og mit firmas Facebooks profil som protest for Facebooks hykleriske politik.
Såfremt du engang vil vælge at oprette et Telegram-kanal, vil jeg med stor glade følge dig på dette medie. Der er lettere at trække vejret 🙂
Kære Lesya Hipeli – mange tak. Det er flot at du har det. Jeg selv og vores stiftelse bruger nu Facebook kun som vinduesudstilling (dvs jeg bruger FB som gratisreklame) – ikke til debat som vi insisterer på skal findes sted på vores hjemmeside under vores artikler (hvilket også befrier mig for at diskutere med folk som ikke engang gider at læse den artikel, de har meninger om).
Jeg er skam på Telegram og hvis der bliver mange nok dér så blir det til en kanal. Og jeg er på VK og på LinkedIn og WeChat – så du og jeg kan følge hinanden. FB, Twitter og Google er ikke nødvendige længere, men de er unægteligt inflydelsesrige. Jeg ville ønske at flere gør som du og jeg.
Du kan læse mere på dette link:
https://transnational.live/2021/01/24/the-moral-decay-at-facebook-goggle-youtube-and-twitter-that-undermines-freedom-and-democracy/
– den omfattende analyse, jeg referer til ovenfor.
Mange tak, og alt godt! – Jan
Jeg ha læst Kennedys artikel om Syrien, Den er som Øbergs hovedartikel tankevækkende og imod, hvad alle dominerende vesteuropæiske aviser har skrevet om samme emne i tidens løb