Amerika

As social media continues its twisting descent into self-destruction, new forms of media arise to replace it. Perhaps signaling that this event is in its early stages, DissentWatch appeared with a mission of chronicling that which social media removes. Fortunately, we were able to get a few moments with the team behind DissentWatch to talk equal and opposite reactions to censorship.

What is the purpose behind DissentWatch?

The purpose behind DissentWatch is to act as a counterbalance to the censorship bombarding our modern communications methods. As we’ve gained distance from the 2016 election, we at DW began to notice our news feeds were “becoming less fun.” When our own posts started becoming censored, we realized that the methods we were using the exchange information were being stifled.

What was more disconcerting is that this went on for quite awhile before we had a sit-up-straight moment and said, “Wait a minute. My speech is being controlled in a very drastic way through this!” It truly says something about the efficacy of Boiling Frog Syndrome. What had happened is we had become lazy, looking to our news feeds to supply us with the news (which we had meticulously crafted to show us what we wanted). Ten years ago you had to go to multiple sites to find what you wanted, then you could set up a news feed to send everything you wanted straight to one site. Our news feeds were being destroyed, but we kept going back to the same spot expecting to get the news as a force of habit.

Essentially, the counterbalance of DissentWatch is to take all that wonderful (and maybe not-so-wonderful) news that was surgically removed from your social media news feed and allow you to continue the laziness you developed from having the news from multiple sources being fed to you in one location. Anything that gets banned from the “mainstream” social media gets featured in our aggregator.

When did you hit on this idea, and what need did you see the site as addressing?

We are addressing the need to “see what everyone is saying at the same time.” In a conversation, the dominant speaker typically guides what is discussed, and we as humans have the disposition to listen to him as an authority figure simply because he’s speaking and no one else is. Other people shut up because they have nothing to say. Of course, this doesn’t make any rational sense, but even the psychology of rational people is set up to respond this way. When sites like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube manipulate their algorithms to make sure the lamestream media is always featured at the top — under the guise that this is due to greater populace being more interested in such things rather than a smaller creator (or even someone like Pewdiepie) — it provides the psychology effect that other things aren’t worth talking or thinking about. This is a powerful effect even if you know it’s happening!

DissentWatch is not looking to be any form of social media, however we are trying to give people easy access to the things they have been accustomed to finding on social media which has been rapidly disappearing due to vague and ridiculous TOS terms.

Do you chronicle only conservatives, or are we the only people getting banned these days?

When we launched the site, we made a strenuous effort to find progressive media outlets who had been banned from major social media outlets. We turned up mostly empty-handed. Banned progressives are just as welcome as banned conservatives on the site, but it looks like mostly the latter is getting banned so far.

Have you personally been banned from social media? What was it like?

Some of us have, yes. The ban was from Facebook, and the first realization was we couldn’t even use Messenger anymore. The shock was huge. It’s bad enough for Facebook to ban and direct political speech, but it’s quite another for it to ban our ability to send private messages to each other. Not only is Facebook now controlling what information we get to see, it’s controlling which friends we’re allowed to talk to. This was the final straw that got us looking into technology that allows us to communicate the way that we want to. This led to us to asking ourselves, “Well, how do we want to see the media we want to see?”

When did the site go online, and how does it work?

The site went online at the end of last August (2019), so it’s quite new. It’s mostly automated, but we have the ability to go in and tweak whatever we want. We pull from RSS feeds, video feeds (like Bitchute or Youtube if the creator hasn’t been banned there, yet), and Twitter and Gab feeds to automatically populate the three columns in the site.

The lightning bolt things are the coolest part, especially for a creator featured on our site. Clicking on the lightning bolts will take you to a page that lets you send bitcoin to an address unique to the article being linked to, and this will move that article into the featured section at the top of the page. Bitcoin spent on a link will be good for a specific number of clicks, so it’s a great opportunity for any individual to feature whatever they might think is important. The ability to feature isn’t constrained to the front page, either. Any link in the archive (which you can search for at the bottom right-hand of the page) can be boosted to the featured section, regardless of how old it is.

The functionality of only accepting Bitcoin (we’re working with accepting other cryptocurrencies, as well) allows full anonymity for the purchaser. Anyone can feature an article and no one has to see who did it, including us. Nobody needs to create an account or provide payment information or anything like that. You can use our site without the need for any cookies at all. It’s like dropping coins into a box.

Why do you think conservatives are being banned so much from social media?

Probably because they are the number one force standing against the current power structure and supporting the idea of nation states.

However, we suspect that conservatives are just the start and that the goal is to ban anyone who isn’t using the proper newspeak. Hopefully, by that time we’ll have replaced these horrible dystopian social media monsters.

Could social media be made a force for good? How would you do that, if you were Mr. Zuckerberg or Dorsey?

Social media has already been made a force for good. It has, at least temporarily, given access of power to the general populace. Whether or not you like Donald Trump, he interrupted the already-planned-out dynastic politics which Hillary Clinton represented. He did this (and continues to do this) through social media. While running for the presidency may have cost Trump many millions, it was definitely cheaper than a normal presidential run.

What does this mean for even more congressional, state, or even local elections? Could some 21 year-old kid who doesn’t really know anything, which by default is better than a communist who knows exactly what they’re doing, run for local office and win simply because he has a crazy video that goes viral? Go to any local government or state government and you’ll probably find it’s run by boring boomers. These positions are frail and could be toppled easily by anyone with charisma, as long as that charisma can easily reach the populace. Social media is, or at least was, this easy reach. Does anyone think the King would be happy about such an arrangement?

What’s maybe even more important is the advent of meme warfare. Meme warfare has put the power of propaganda into the hands of the general populace, which is why social media (especially Facebook) has cracked down on memes so hard. People make decisions on emotion, not reason, and memes can be crafted to speak straight to our emotional centers. We at DissentWatch think the most powerful emotion provided by memes has been humor. Those in power — the elite, the globalists, the communists, the Illuminati, the bankers, the Jews, whoever the hell it is or whoever the hell you think they are — cannot stand one thing above all else: to be laughed at. Laughter burns through their power like a brush fire.

So, if we were Zuckerberg or Dorsey, in order to maximize the good of social media, we would probably just do the opposite of what Zuckerberg and Dorsey are doing. Make data private, encourage everyone to have open dialogue, support political movements that emphasize freedom and free speech, etc.

How has response to DissentWatch been so far? Is the site growing?

The site is growing much faster than we anticipated. The positive response has been overwhelming. We believe we’ve really provided a service that a lot of people were looking for.

Why do you think America is so divided that we have come to the point where censorship is, for lack of a better word, “normal”?

Whenever we have this conversation amongst ourselves, the conversation always comes back to the public educational system. Since its inception, one of the prime purposes of the public educational system was to intercept parents’ cultural effects on their children and replace them with the desired culture of the state. We have gone through so many iterations of publicly-schooled teachers teaching new students in public schools with parents who, because they went to public schools themselves, don’t question what’s happening to their children. The whole system has turned into nothing but a propaganda machine.

Not that the school system alone is enough, even if it’s the prime engine driving a cultural idiocy that begs for censorship. We also wonder at the increasing prevalence over the last century of single motherhood, the lack of importance placed on breastfeeding, the rise of the daycare generation, the nutritional scare to avoid fats that are necessary for brain development, the addition of toxic chemicals to food that hinder brain function, the ultraweaponization of the media — all of these are physical impairments that prevent critical thinking and self-awareness. The minds of a massive part of the populace have become so weakened that a greater and greater majority succumb to the insanity force-fed to them in the public school system. There has always been an attempt to psychologically condition people to repeat whatever they’re told, provided the institution they’ve been conditioned to recognize as the authority has decreed it. However, we think what’s different in modern times is this multi-pronged attack on people’s ability to physically resist the conditioning.

How do people keep track of you on social media, the site, and any news of what you are doing?

So far we have been active with Twitter and Gab accounts. We’re looking into setting of a Facebook account as well, but there’s pretty much a betting table as to how long it will last before we’re banned.

Tags: censorship, dissentwatch, social media