On deplatforming Substack and the meaning of free speech Myth and revolution, pt. 0 LAUGHLYN (JOHAN EDDEBO) JAN 23

Colin Bruce Milne Jan 23 · Colin’s Substack Spread this around. As many have pointed out, Substack is facing increasing pressure from the narrative gatekeepers since it’s grown very rapidly in the last couple of years, and since it’s allowing dissident voices to make a genuine impact. For many reasons, this pressure is to be expected. By their very nature, all forms of mass communications media, from even organized recitation of verse in oral cultures, to today’s jumble of digital propaganda mainlining, are always primarily a tool of the social hierarchy. An instrument of the ruling class, the elite caste, or whatever authority structure you’re dealing with. Mass media in this most general sense, propagating itself from the centre to the periphery and from the few to the many, is at its heart the activity of the established power structure towards realizing its own intentions. But this is a double-edged sword, since historically, these kinds of tools could always be subverted and used to counteract or depart from the goals and intentions of the ruling classes. The advent of the printing press in Europe is a case in point. Even though it strengthened central authority significantly, it also enabled organized popular resistance of every conceivable kind, and its appearance coincides with the emergence of something akin to a political consciousness among the general population. The attempts to deplatform Substack is really nothing less than the ensuing repeated censorships of Voltaire’s books by the French government in the early 18th century, just ahead of the Age of Revolutions. It’s similar to the Nazi’s book burnings, or the Pinochet regime’s mass destruction of politically subversive material in the early 70s. Same thing. These are tactics for controlling actual and potential dissent that could interfere with the goals and intentions of the established power structure. They will always be employed if it’s deemed necessary, and for the very same reason, in what’s called “modern democracies”, such quaint touchstones as freedom of speech or freedom of the press have always been conditional. In other words, the press is always only free insofar its output does not meaningfully interfere with the intentions, goals and desires of the power elite. You can vote on a set of preselected candidates, parties or cliques, as long as their participation in the power structure doesn’t rock the boat too much. But there’s always counter-organizing. There’s always subversion and sabots to be thrown into the gears. Or there at least used to be. The main difference about the Substack deplatforming, and of similar contemporary attempts at tethering and controlling forums for discourse, is that they’re potentially invincible and all-encompassing. Back in the day, while the powers that be could just burn books, smash the printing presses and hang the editors, anyone and his dog could just build everything from scratch again and start over. Anywhere. Mutt the Cigarette-Delivering French Bulldog & Other Animals of World War I - World War I Centennial Mutt, the trench-running, cigarette-delivering French Bulldog of WW1 With today’s centralized internet architecture and its incredible capacity for propaganda, the necessity of digital transactions, and the push towards all-encompassing surveillance, there’s a potential to actually construct an essentially undefeatable censorship machine. For one, there’s already an effective social credit system in place, right here in the West. Big data mass surveillance already knows your face, your whereabouts, and your spending habits. Add to that organized penalties for infractions of “community guidelines” in the increasingly centralized, monolithic social media architecture that’s more or less integrated with the banking system, and you have a tacitly emergent, ubiquitous social credit system. You don’t need to intentionally and explicitly build one. The character of the technology and its design will over time reproduce the basic intentions of the power stucture. And meaningful dissent, as most of us know, is being penalized through shadowbanning or social ostracization by the useful idiots of the volunteer thought police. Information is being curated by filtering algorithms, and actively generated by large language models that are not only used for supporting approved narratives, but that due to their very structure will tend towards reproducing and permanenting the already-dominant points of view. You don’t need anything like an active conspiracy. In the very near future, all of our kids will be educated by AI shills whose only purpose is to extract surplus value from the workers and sell you things you don’t need. If the people of this period in history are blocked from avenues of subversion and dissent, that loss of access could be final. It could remain for a thousand years. That boot stamping on a human face, essentially forever. For these reasons, our contemporary struggle is more important than any similar political undertaking throughout the modern period. If we lose platforms like Substack, and if the digital architecture becomes structurally “vaccinated” against them ever emerging again, the battle is lost. Originally posted on shadowrunners shadowrunners laughlyn (johan eddebo) tribal resistance in the neo-feudal corporate dystopia © 2024 Colin Bruce Milne 548 Market Street PMB 72296, San Francisco, CA 94104