What do you know about consolidation? Look at the modern internet, and compare with the internet of the mid-late 90s. Internet today is definitely much faster, more accessible and more useful in general. But what is the price? Think about it. If you want to find something - you open Google, if you want to watch something - you open YouTube or Netflix, if you want to read or write something - you open Facebook or Twitter, if you want to buy or sell something - you open Amazon or Ebay. Nobody forces you to do so, but you are doing it every day. Why? Because it’s convenient. But it is very scary as well.

Today many businesses, individual content creators and merchants are building their job and life around big platforms. Big platforms are very useful tools for both producers and consumers, but it makes both of them very dependent on platform itself. Even if you are just consumer - try to not use these platforms for a week, and you will understand what I do mean. But for producers, of course, things are much, much, much worse. Censorship. What? This retro thing from 20th century which was used by dictators to suppress freedom of speech, free markets and any sort of competition? It’s completely gone in modern democratic society, and environment today is free and competitive, right?

Well.. Ask YouTube blogger about demonetisation, or about “copyright” strikes. Ask Twitter user about shadowban. Ask Amazon or Ebay merchant what happens if he mentions the word “bitcoin” anywhere. Ask any content creator about “offensive” or “misinformation” content labeling, and how easy it can be done. We have gone too far. In general, modern content report and labeling mechanism is a gun with monstrous devastating power, and everybody today have this gun in the pocket by default. This gun is the worst nightmare of content creators, because literally any person can press one button and destroy everything what has been built for many years. Instead of honest competition tool like open discussion, people are just pointing this stupid gun to each other, waiting for opportunity to pull the trigger, but maybe, just maybe, it will be much better if this gun does not exist at all. Issues with “misinformation” content are similar. Of course, coronavirus 5G towers conspiracy theory is ridiculous. But let the information market define the value of this theory. Let open discussion and competition happen. Who we are to speak for everyone? The real value of anything can be discovered only in a free and competitive environment, which is unfortunately not the case today. These kinds of censorship are happening so ofthen that we have already begun to consider it as the new norm and necessary evil, and younger generations will consider it as the only possible correct option.

One thing I would like to mention here, is that today all major internet platforms are private companies. And I completely respect their constitutional right to censor or ban any content or any person. As far as this happens inside their platform - it’s completely fine, because it is literally their platform, and they are free to do with it whatever they want. In the situation of true free market competition, where one platform starts to practice censorship, other similar platforms which don’t practice censorship will obtain significant compatitive advantage basically for free. So why do platforms still want to practice censorship when this is not even profitable? The answer is simple - they don’t want to do it. They are directly or indirectly obliged by governments to do it. Government censorship today mostly applied not to individuals (like it was in 20th century) but to platforms, simply because it’s more effort/impact efficient, and because it looks a bit less counter constitutional. A couple of show trials against platforms quickly explain new rules of the game to platform owners, because usually it causes a huge financial losses. And for platforms it’s more profitable to overreact and apply even harder censorship to platform content creators, just in case, to prevent any possibility of these losses happening again. Content creators in turn after receiving couple of warnings, bans, strikes or demonetization from the platform tend to overreact even more, and apply even more self-censorship, just in case, to prevent any possibility of removing their channel, social network account or permamnent platform ban.

Censorship and self-censorship is much more common than you can ever imagine, and causes significant consequences in life and mentality of everyone. Even if you don’t see or feel it - it still affects you right now. Here is a trick - platform users are seeing only what they see, i.e. what platform is showing them. At this point, censorship already happened, and content consumers are not even aware of censored content ever existed. That’s perfect censorship, much more efficient than any 20th century alternatives. Just compare it - in the old glorious days content was distributed first (for example if form of book) and censored later (government declares book ownership as a felony). In this case significant amount of people already consumed ideas declared in a book, and even if it’s censored, ideas are already delivered to society, and have a chance to naturally dominate if they are giving comtetitive advantage. But today content is censored or self-censored first. The end. Modern censorship is perfectly described by a quote from an old Russian movie DMB:

- Do you see a gopher?...
- No...
- And I don't see... But he is!

Just imagine amount of things and possibilities humanity is missing every day because of this. How much we have not seen, have not heard, have not spoken, and have not done because of this? We think we are choosing what to see, in reality they are choosing what to show. How many times did we applied self-censorship, how many times we were afraid to say what we really think in a form we really like, just because everybody silently was keeping in mind what there is non-zero possibility to be punished by authorities? Everyone sees that people are punished for less, and we prefer to just keep quiet, avoid problems and be safe. If this is done regulary for a long time, we are really starting to think the way they like, this is how human brain works. If we will continue to depend on internet platforms so much, they will obtain mind-control power that dictators of the 20th century never dreamed of, and we will not even notice it. History has taught us that progress is possible only in competitive environment, 20th century proved in practice superiority of capitalism, free markets and freedom of speech. It’s never too late to change the world (until it’s too late). Let’s step by step retake our liberty and sovereignty. I’ll show you how.