Trust Issues.

The internet is a cesspool. Beware the clean up squad.

Do you know RFK? He’s Bobby Kennedy’s son and he’s running for President of the United States as an independent. He probably won’t win. But he could seriously affect the result. Most likely taking votes from Trump, and helping a cadaverous Biden stumble his way to a second term.

RFK is best known, I think it’s fair to say, for two things. Firstly, a weird raspy voice, the result of a rare neurological disorder, which you might think would preclude him from appearing on every podcast going, but doesn’t. He’s got lots of interesting things to say, some of which you might agree with, some of which you probably won’t. If you’re RFK curious, I recommend a listen to his interview with the always dependable Bari Weiss here.

And the second thing he’s known for, is his opposition to vaccines. Not just the much maligned COVID vaccines, but pretty much all of them . Personally I think most vaccines are very much a good thing. Some people, like RFK, have pointed to a rise in autism as vaccination rates have increased. And that’s fair enough. But correlation isn’t causation. So it’s worth noting autism rates have also grown alongside the number of (excellent) albums Taylor Swift has released, and an increase in the amount of people wearing Crocs. So I’m not convinced.

The COVID vaccine I’m less sure about. You don’t need to be sporting a tinfoil hat to see that they are perhaps not as ‘safe and effective’ as we were lead to believe.

But the reason I bring up RFK isn’t because of his weird/sexy (don’t judge me) voice. Or because of his stance on vaccines, well at least not directly, but because he is currently suing the good old BBC over claims of censorship.

In his lawsuit RFK accuses the BBC of censoring anyone who questions the official COVID narrative, expresses scepticism about the effectiveness of lockdowns, or doubts the efficacy of those vaccines.

Essentially people like him. And rereading that list, I guess, me.

And not just the BBC. He’s also suing Facebook. Google, YouTube, Twitter, Reuters, The New York Times, The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, (Obvs), The European Broadcasting Union (Double obvs) , The Financial Times, The Washington Post, Microsoft and several others.

In fact pretty much the whole Trusted News Initiative.

You know the Trusted News Initiative right? Sure you do! The alliance of super powerful private media companies, tech firms and unaccountable state broadcasters which have banded together to decide which news and opinions you should be allowed to read, and which should be kept from you, on the grounds that they are, in their view, ‘misinformation.’

That Trusted News Initiative.

Hang on. Surely if such a powerful group as the Trusted News Initiative existed, you might be expected to have heard of it before now?

Not really. For some reason, which I can’t quite work out, (I can work out), they clearly don’t want to advertise too widely the fact that the members of this unelected cartel are setting themselves up as the new gatekeepers of acceptable opinion, and official arbiters of ‘The Truth’.

But there are two sides to every story, as Trusted News Initiative members don’t say.

The BBC believes the TNI is vital to combat the growing scourge of online misinformation. It set out its stall in a 2020 article warning

‘Examples [of misinformation] include widely shared memes which link falsehoods about vaccines to freedom and individual liberties’.

I don’t know the specific memes the article is referring to, but it’s clear vaccine mandates did indeed lead to severe restrictions on freedom and individual liberties. For example, health care workers were warned they would lose their job if they weren’t vaxed, (later rescinded), and foreign travel was severely limited for the unvaccinated.  So it’s pretty likely these examples weren’t ‘falsehoods’. But were instead, facthoods.

And if nasty memes weren’t enough of a threat,

‘Other posts seek to downplay the risks of coronavirus’

Again I didn’t see the specific posts the article refers to, but official fear mongering definitely overplayed the risks of coronavirus, certainly for the vast majority of people. We weren’t all ‘equally at risk’, and schools were closed even though it was soon pretty obvious that this policy was much more harmful to children than the virus would ever be.

So this article setting out why we need a Trusted News Initiative to battle online deception has cited two examples of ‘misinformation’, both of which seemingly turned out to be true. Or at least, if we wanted to be charitable, were open to a wide range of interpretation.

The BBC article goes on to say

‘it is vital that audiences know they can turn to sources they trust for accurate, impartial information.’

Perhaps. But when you refuse to refer to a group of people, who spread terror by committing terrorist acts such as baking babies in ovens, as ‘terrorists’. Then that’s probably not you.

But I’m not here to bash the BBC. I did that a couple of weeks ago. So if you want that sort of thing, fill your boots here.

Eagle eyed readers might be wondering why the Guardian, never one to shy away from condemning Wrongthink, isn’t one of the TNI’s high minded busybodies.

Well, perhaps it’s because it is already allied with another meddlesome band of self appointed thought police. NewsGuard. The ‘fact checking’ and news rating site which hands out a clean bill of health to news providers such as Bloomberg and The New York Times. So, some real diversity of opinion there.

It might be worth asking yourself why are so many of these pro censorship groups springing up? What is it they don’t want you to know? And why don’t they want you to know it?

If you think the answer to any of these questions involves, stopping you stumbling over false facts, keeping you safe from fraud, or protecting your kids from harm, I have a mouldering shipping container of unused PPE to sell you.   

The urge to control the narrative is not driven by the elite’s desire to keep you safe. It’s driven by a desire to keep them safe. From you.

A generation or so ago our media landscape was very different. Sure we had free speech, but to really get your message out there, you had to be published in a book or a print magazine, given a platform in a newspaper, secured yourself a seat in parliament, a top job in a public institution or government body, or maybe just found a role as a pundit on TV.

It wasn’t a conspiracy. Not really. It was just a self selecting system which naturally ensured that mainstream orthodoxy was promoted and amplified, while dissenting voices were kept to a minimum. Or at least accommodated, de fanged, and rendered harmless.

Then along came the internet and suddenly these traditional gatekeepers lost their monopoly.

Anyone could publish their opinions online. It didn’t matter if you were an ex spin doctor like Alastair Campbell , the host of Fear Factor like Joe Rogan, or a middle aged (OK, late middle aged) dad sitting by a canal in North London.

Everyone got a turn.

You’d think the BBC, and our media elites would have loved that. After all they always seem to be banging on with demands for more and more ‘equality’. (Soz. Equity)

But not a bit of it. When it comes to equality, the elites talk a good game, but whenever they are actually put on equal footing with the great unwashed, the hoi poloi, us common folk, they absolutely hate it.

Just remember the hissy fits, foot stamping hufflepuffs, and incredulous tears of rage we all enjoyed, when Elon Musk took their Blue Ticks away.

Our clod footed bosses, the out of touch political class, were slow to react to the arrival of the online world, only realising far too late, its genuine revolutionary potential, and just how much it threatened their real world power.

Its audience diminishing, the legacy media also began haemorrhaging profit and influence. Advertisers leaked away online, and the old barnstorming newspaper editors lost their power to influence politics and (maybe) swing elections. 

So for years the traditional media and our politicians have shared the same fever dream of putting the Wild West version of the internet, the ungovernable online genie, back in its bottle. Or more accurately deplatforming that genie, and calling him a low information, racist transphobe.

And great news! A toxic brew of identity politics, COVID, Trump, foreign wars, and the Climate Apocalypse have conspired to create a ‘perma-crisis’. A constant ever present threat, which has provided these media elites with exactly the justification they need to step in and censor, manipulate, and control our online experience.

For our own good, of course.

One major way these organisations hope to maintain influence, and hang on to their already diminished audiences, is to rubbish the competition.

It seems clear that an aim of groups like the TNI, NewsGuard, and the entirety of what Michael Shellenberger calls The Censorship Industrial Complex, is to create a two tier internet.

First there’s the approved, sanitised, curated, and ‘trusted’ side. Home to all the big players, official narratives and accepted opinions. A safe space. Where things are kept simple with a clearly defined, easily Googled, cast of Goodies and Baddies, each conforming to their ascribed role and fulfilling their appropriate function. Villain, Victim, Hero, Saint, Sage, Prophet and Fool.

A morally straightforward landscape, policed by an oligarchy of tech companies. Where advertisers are happy to spend money and every one basks in the mutually reinforcing glow of acceptable polite opinion, and elite approval.

And then there’s the ‘untrusted’, poisonous side. A ‘dark web’, full of conspiracy theories, weirdos, insurrectionists, ‘Russian disinfo’, Bitcoin, Trump, anti-vaxxers, (that last link genuinely hilarious) Proud Boys and pedos. A dangerous place. Home only to the exiled, the Cancelled. Where every moral compass is broken and every deviant opinion, sceptical enquiry or inconvenient question is branded ‘far right’ and toxic.

There be dragons.

Definitely not a place where top corporations would want to post their ads.

It’s an approach that clearly works. Just ask the advertising sales team over at Twitter. (Also let’s be honest Elon, rebranding it as X hasn’t helped.)

Every day social media companies are shadow banning inconvenient content, de monetising unacceptable perspectives and using the algorithm to downgrade and hide opinions they don’t like from their users. While news companies play their part, choosing which stories to promote, and which to studiously ignore. (Shout out to The Big Guy!)

This is not a conspiracy theory. Matt Taibbi, Bari Weiss and Michael Shellenberger proved it with the Twitter Files. An exposé which has just earned them the DAO Award for journalism.

In the future other tools may become available to ‘help us’ avoid falling prey to ‘controversial’, dangerous or inconvenient content. Both the authoritarian Labour Party, and the authoritarian Tories are desperate to introduce digital IDs (just this week greenlit by the EU) and age verification, ostensibly to protect kids from ‘online harms’.

Forget porn. How long until you need to put in a digital ID, register your identity and ‘prove you are 18’ to watch a Donald Trump speech? To read an article by Jordan Peterson? Or maybe watch an interview with JK Rowling? In fact anything declared ‘controversial content.’

Would you put in your Official ID? Knowing full well that your viewing habits may one day become available (Whoops! We’ve been hacked! Soz!!) to a potential employer? Or even Social Services?

Soon, the only way to remain hidden online will be to use Incognito Mode. Which of course is completely effective and renders all those mucky sites you visit 1000% anonymous. It does right? Right??? Asking for a friend.

Look. I’m not saying the internet is currently a repository for nuance, truth and honesty. Of course it isn’t.

There are a myriad types of misinformation online. This is an incredibly complex, issue, and a genuinely tricky problem. But unfortunately one which presents censorship loving outfits like the TNI with a golden opportunity.

The real danger is, if they succeed in becoming the arbiters of what is ‘true’ and what is ‘false’, there will ultimately only be one type of misinformation out there, their’s.

One set of acceptable opinions. One version of events. One available interpretation of data. One set of approved facts.

And if there is one thing that has become abundantly clear over the last very few years, it’s that relying on one interpretation of events, one absolute version of the truth, can prove extraordinarily harmful to all of us individually, and society in general. Even when, (though I’d suggest especially when), the motivation behind that homogenisation of thought can be plausibly claimed to have been driven by the best intentions.

It would be naive to think that this desire to censor is not ideologically driven. Of course it is. It is an attempt to shape the narrative and label dissenting political views not only false and unacceptable, but actually dangerous.

This isn’t about cleaning up the internet. It is an attempt to justify suppressing information, or stigmatising opinions, the powerful don’t like.

These people claim that somehow you will benefit from hearing fewer voices, from being exposed to a narrower range of opinions.

They suggest that your life will be enhanced if you have less choice, encounter fewer ideas, and have a more limited perspective on the world.

This cannot possibly be correct.

We don’t need Auntie and her high minded billionaire friends in Silicon Valley telling us what is, and isn’t safe to read, watch, and consume.

We are grown ups. We are capable of looking at competing opinions, assessing their merits or otherwise, and deciding for ourselves. (Something which people report they already increasingly do with online information.) Surely, at its heart, that’s how democracy is meant to work.

But we cannot be trusted to think for ourselves in case we end up thinking the ‘wrong’ thing.

We can’t be allowed to asses the full range of facts in case we come to an incorrect conclusion. And perhaps even conclude that perhaps the wrong people are in charge.

The irony is organisations like The Trusted News Initiative need to force us to rely on their news, only because their news has proved so unreliable.

If anyone from the TNI is reading this, (Unlikely) then here’s a tip. If you want to improve trust in your outdated, sclerotic, biased and condescending legacy media, or censorious online click factories. Then maybe. Stop lying to us. Every single chance you get.

Now excuse me. I’m off for my fifth booster. There’s a new variant about, and I’m not taking any chances.

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I first heard of The Trusted News Initiative from this article by Toby Young. And I first heard of NewsGuard from my friend Ollie. So thanks for that.

I promised I wouldn't mention the Israel/ Gaza war and the protests again this time, so I haven't. But God the last two weeks have been utterly depressing. And grimly predictable.

I know people who have been on those marches. They say they were non violent. They didn’t hear any chanting. That this is a complex two sided issue, with much nuance. Ok fair enough. If you are happy with that, then you do you.

But when it comes to raping women until their bones break, or baking babies in ovens, then sorry, but I tend to be an absolutist kinda guy.

Inevitably, and unforgivably, the atrocities of 7/10 are already being memory holed, largely through the insidious processes described above. Already the narrative is becoming that Israel has mercilessly invaded a largely blameless Gaza. Laying waste to hospitals with gay abandon. While here at home, far right thugs rampage through the streets, spurred on by an out of control (I can hardly keep up!-Ex) Home Secretary, whose hate filled words are divisive and inflammatory

Meanwhile, almost unmentioned, synagogues in St John’s Wood are targeted by cars full of paint and flag wielding youth. The Telegraph and the Mail reported it. Hardly blanket coverage.

See you next time.

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NB: (Prediction time: The Democrats will surely replace Biden at the last minute. With the appalling Gavin Newsom or perhaps even helicopter in Michelle Obama. Biden’s poll numbers are terrible and he’s just too too old). Thoughts?