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Once again, there is another case of censorship threatening the free internet (always with the same bias, generally speaking, if it is not too adventurous). This time it is not about the big corporations, but about those allies that are the modern states, against some AltTech solutions, an alternative social media.
Nor is it related to the supposed “new political-economic power”, of which Europe wants to be a “Soviet satellite.” However, it seems that its ban list (list of DNS servers and blocked web portals), as an idea, as a concept, wants to be copied by some European institutions.
The Danish government wants to censor the BitChute platform
In 2017, one of the peak years of relevance for the alt-right movement, a video publishing service was launched in the UK that is called BitChute and works in a peer-to-peer (P2P) way, which is a network concept where there is no server for several clients, but nodes that exchange data with each other.
Not too late, some people started to label it in the same way as the “alternative Twitter”, Gab, which is still very relevant today, among other reasons, for its contribution to the “spiritual battle”. Yes, they started talking about “far-right”, being this their favorite term to intimidate anyone who questions the progressive “official truth”.
Now, what motivates us to write more than anything else is that Internet Service Providers (ISPs) in Denmark are being ordered to block access to this service. In theory, for “misinformation” regarding the coronavirus coded as COVID-19.
It would not be the only attempt of outright censorship on BitChute.
Continuing with what blogger Paul Joseph Watson reports, not only have those related search terms been restricted, nor are related videos removed (as YouTube does). Directly, you can not access, even if it is to consult tutorials on matrix algebra or Chinese gastronomy.
In other Western countries, the same thing would have happened. In Australia, some ISPs tried to do the same as in the Nordic country, while the British state authorities and the Brussels Eurocracy are studying how to “knock down” the provision of this service at the tip of the network iceberg.
In this respect, BitChute points to a number of European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) litigations on its website that would be related to so-called “hate crimes”. At the same time, they acknowledge that they have to establish rules of behavior, and remind that a web platform cannot violate the presumption of innocence.
They also add that, in 2018, the Eurocracy imposed the so-called AVMSD on all its member states, including the United Kingdom despite the process of withdrawal from the European Union (in accordance with what the majority of citizens voted in June 2016). This regulation called for “censoring hate speech”.
Now, do you remember that in 2017, in Matal v. Tam, the U.S. Supreme Court decided not to carve out exceptions to the constitutional First Amendment, which absolutely guarantees freedom of speech, as long as it does not physically harm another person?
Interestingly, some Big Tech is already allowing the “official truth” about the “Chinese virus” to be questioned
This week, White House “family doctor” Anthony Fauci, known for his sympathies towards the WHO-CCP tandem and his strictly scientistic criteria, lost a well-argued verbal battle, in a congressional hearing, against the fellow doctor and Senator Rand Paul (R-KY).
One of the reasons for “defeat” was that he let slip that maybe COVID-19 (“China virus”, as Donald Trump said) could have originated in a laboratory, which could be the Wuhan Institute of Virology, to which the NIH granted more than half a million dollars for research with “bat coronaviruses”.
Anyway, it is worth noting that, apart from that, it turns out that Zuckerberg and Dorsey’s services (Facebook and Twitter) no longer apply any kind of filter on COVID-19 theories that question the “official version” or challenge police statism (there used to be warnings and threats that the content would be removed).
Let us value the escape routes favored by the decentralization of the Internet.
I insist with conviction that the essence of the Internet lies in its dispersion and decentralization. At the same time, it is necessary to take advantage of evolution and innovation to ensure the freedom and secrecy of communications, without depending on the arbitrariness of the state’s entente with Big Tech.
I am not saying that we should not criticize (of course!). To throw in the towel, even if only verbally, is to unconsciously and indirectly legitimize the enemy. But we must keep in mind that, fortunately, the Internet can ensure our freedom, having advantages such as the Deep Web, the “private Internet” or the so-called VPNs.
Ángel Manuel García Carmona es ingeniero de software, máster en Big Data Analyst, columnista y tradicionalista libertario // Ángel Manuel García Carmona is a software engineer, master in Big Data Analyst, columnist and libertarian traditionalist.