where do i start on the topic of google and their blatant dis-respect for civil liberties and basic human decency?

the challenge i have in sharing this with many of us is that it is not until you start speaking out on topics that google's agents don't want to be seen publicly (and that includes the world governments who google have openly given full censorship abilities to) - you won't really notice the depths of the control that google covertly exercises on youtube, google search engine results and beyond.

in 2014 i wrote the following about google's covert and overt censoring:

i have seen my own comments on youtube censored and even worse than that: the comments are censored - yet i am not informed they have been censored and i am left thinking that others can read them. this is a direct violation of freedom of speech and is extremely duplicitous. i can think of no other websites that do this.

since then, as could be easily predicted...

we have seen an increase in google's covert agenda to censor users of youtube/google who output ideas that deviate from the narrative they wish us to pursue. however, rather than stick totally to the shadows they have attempted to mask their behavior by rolling out the 'youtube heroes' program that claims to elevate some of the 'special' lowly youtubers into demi-gods who can take upon themselves the task of censoring youtube on behalf of google... excuse me for being cynical here, but as someone who regularly watches my comments become invisible to everyone except for me on youtube and google - without any explanation or warning from google - it is obvious to me that this program is just a way to attempt to create a facade of respectability around google's actions that presents the image that they respect free speech by 'giving the community control', while in truth they can easily just use this program as a cover to censor whoever they wish, just as they always have done.

since i wrote my original post on this topic in 2014 there have been a few developments in this sad saga. on a personal level i gave a presentation to software engineers in italy in 2016 on the topic of holistic balance in system design and used google's censoring of youtube comments as an example of how NOT to design a balanced feature in a system. at that event was a google engineer who agreed, along with the consensus on youtube's own product forums, that the approach google had to silently censoring comments needed to be fixed. it was only a few weeks after that that the youtube heroes program was announced. while i don't think that my talk was the cause of that announcement, i do sometimes wonder of the timing involved there.

with the recent focus on so called 'fake news' in the lamestream dinosaur media, there can be no doubt among the media savvy that the agenda among the dieing media giants is to attempt to discredit as many of the non corporate news sources as possible, regardless of how absurd they look in the process. it is easy for us independent authors to combat and respond to their moves by simply using the evidence and logic that shows their propaganda for what it is, but unfortunately, for the many consumers who never do their own research and who have bought the mainstream programming hook, line and sinker - the evidence against the mainstream can look too far fetched to be accepted. as the famous phrase goes:

"it is easier to deceive someone than to get them to accept that they have been deceived"

while that idea doesn't always hold true, it is still a relevant point in the equation here.

what prompted me to write the text you are now reading is that i wrote a comment under a youtube video for kirt nimmo's well thought out video on the topic of the alleged 'fake news' issue and offered to link people to my own writing on the topic. since i was aware that if i post a URL to my site as a first comment that my comment will essentially never see the light of day i simply let people know that i have a link i'd like to share with them and that if they reply to me then i will be able to post the URL as a second tier comment to them. originally, this worked fine for me on youtube (as far as i am aware) - but in this case, as with other cases recently - people stated that they could not see the URL i had posted to them. then one said she could see it, but only in her notifications, not in the main list of comments. so it appears that youtube's censoring algorithm has been updated to take into account that some youtubers do actually want to access the urls we share and it does it's best to allow those 'crazy' people to get to the url, while blocking it from everyone else. it is absurd to suggest that such an algorithm could be designed without the intent being present to literally censor those who are targeted by it.

but still, there will be people wanting to support google and their algorithms, not wanting to conclude that google's agents / operators have malicious intent. to those people i say this:

in the documentary 'google and the world brain' several people were interviewed who knew the owners of google before they were famous and who say that they were told that the aim of google was not to make money, but to create a 'world brain' - a massive AI system that, we can infer, will be used to effectively control thought on the planet. if google truly were just trying to 'block spammers', why then do we not hear from them how they are champions of free speech and why do they not make it a primary priority to address any and all possible concerns we users may have that our free speech may be being impinged by their actions? why have the threads on this topic in their forums not received a serious answer after years of comments by frustrated users?

while you consider that, here is kirt nimmo's video on the topic of fake news that triggered me to write here. :/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=88w_J_KsSv0