Another great article from 404 Media highlighting the power that the tech giants have amassed over how how we use the internet.
This brings me, I think, to the elephant in the room, which is the fact that Google has its hands on quite literally every aspect of this entire saga as a vertically integrated adtech giant.
This extreme power over the adtech and online advertising ecosystem is one of the subjects of an FTC antitrust suit against Google.
No need to be sarcastic, in my kingdom I’ll be absolute ruler and “censor” and suppress others as I see fit.
And everybody else is free to do the same and tell me to feck off.
I think censorship in the Fediverse works because you can always find a host which aligns with your ideology. Bad ideas automatically die out if the overwhelming majority of people stop spreading it, not because a giant megacorp decides it’s not a good message to show to their shareholders.
But good ideas can be hidden from users if an admin bans instances or remote users. It’s a new type of censorship.