Like the celebrities who always say that it's just an honor to be nominated during awards season, I would like to say it is an honor to be censored.
As a creator who is critical of capitalism and US policies - especially US military policies - I am right in that sweet spot. We know that the American surveillance state has the ability to pull all sorts of online shenanigans - and as the Twitter Files series by Matt Taibbi shows, American social media platforms frequently work hand in glove with the full alphabet soup of American agencies to protect the status quo from... people like me.
Back on March 19 I did a post about my experience posting videos on Youtube and Instagram. In that video I showed how posts that got over a hundred thousand views on TikTok would get maybe single digits on the American platforms. I've noticed some other weirdness since.
On Youtube people tell me they can't find my page. Commenters complain that their comments disappear. People who subscribe and want to see my posts can't find them in their feed - they have to visit my profile page to find recent posts. I am frequently not notified when comments come in. I feel like Youtube doesn't like me!
Over on Instagram I lost the ability to follow anyone back. My attempts to reply to comments are sometimes blocked or disappear.
But hey, maybe I'm just being paranoid. My wife has a persistent inability to respost videos on TikTok. Everybody experiences some of these hassles once in a while. I'm just saying it seems to happen to me an awful lot.
My favorite story of clear suppression happened recently, back on August 28th. I made a post based off of Smedley Butler's book War is a Racket that was highly critical of the American military establishment. It took off like a rocket the morning I posted, shooting past 10,000 views in just a couple of hours. The trend line was going vertical when suddenly somebody flipped a switch. At right around 58,000 views the algorithm shut me down, totally puked its guts out. According to the metrics that post went from 7,000 views one hour to 7 views the next. In the weeks since that video has crawled its way to 62,000.
Maybe I'm just paranoid. But every activist on the left has to know that the surveillance state will take an interest in you. Somewhere, a file will be opened. You can go online and see the records the FBI kept on historian Howard Zinn - a man who once served as a bombardier during World War 2. In 2013 the CIA admitted, after years of denials, that it kept a file on America's greatest intellectual Noam Chomsky. Now, the CIA is specifically prohibited, by law, from collecting information about the domestic activities of Americans. And yet they do it anyway.
That's because criticizing the establishment from the left is considered a threat to the establishment. And threats to the establishment are considered a threat to the nation - because the establishment considers their interests to be the national interest. American law enforcement and spy agencies reflect these attitudes.
But again, maybe I'm just paranoid. Take this for whatever it's worth. I have eyeballs. I see posts that have fewer comments, fewer likes, fewer favorites - and lots more views than my posts. Many of the metrics that are supposed to propel a video in front of more eyeballs seem to break down with my posts. Just sayin.
If you want a look at that suppressed video, please check out the War is a Racket playlist on my profile. And don't forget to like, follow, favorite, repost. Also, the best possible way to frustrate attempts to suppress my posts is to sign up for my Substack. That way my posts get sent directly to your inbox.
Let's make them pay.
It's an Honor to Be Censored