Cyber Potemkin Village

Thought Policing and the Dead Internet

Where Did the Rest of the Internet Go?

by Truthstream Media

“We know where you are. We know where you’ve been. We can more or less know what you’re thinking about;.” ~ (Eric Schmidt, CEO GOOGLE 2001-2011).

Dear Substack Community,

When the internet first came into our home, via a wire that connected to our phone line which emitted a deafening connection screech, it was amazing and did change our lives for the better: My children could research their homework and papers; I could chat with my sister down in Los Angeles and we were able to communicate more. Being in college myself at the time, I could write my own papers on the luxurious word processing program which really boosted the quality of my papers and my grades.

Then, with the miracle of AOL (LOL), email was introduced into my life, and by the time Casey was killed in Iraq on 2004, I had quite an email list for the time, and I began writing articles that appeared on many so-called antiwar sites (which were really pro-Democrat, for the most part).

I really felt like access to the internet was a marvelously positive thing. Then came Blackberries and more smart phone technology—also, positive at first, but now I feel like I am being overwhelmed by electronic abuse from the time I get up early in the morning, until I shut down at night—and this doesn’t even count the surveillance that is attached to every i, or smart, phone.

In the beginning of the www, it seemed like access to information was democratized. Anyone could share information, or consume information, and we were able to make up our own minds what we trusted, or didn’t. Now whatever information we seek is carefully curated by the owners of the web based on what the global rulers decide what’s best for its users. Debates were frequent, but didn’t seem so acrimonious all the time.

I was briefly on MySpace before Facebook murdered it and I LOVED that connection, at first. However, around the time of Putin delivering the 2016 election to Trump <snark>, my life on social media began to be pretty hellish.

Cyber-god forbid anyone go against the prevailing and established narrative on ANYTHING anymore—I spent seven months out of 12 on Facebook ban in 2021 because I QUESTIONED, questioned the ‘Rona narrative. After my last ban was over, it was obvious that Facebook was shadow-banning my account and very few people were seeing any of my posts, nor was I seeing many posts that were interesting, or diverse.

I began to be very offended when I realized that I was raising money for Mark Zuckerberg and he was deciding what I could, or couldn’t say—or blocking others from reading my opinions about anything. (Which many people would say was a good thing, but it’s not up to Zuckerberg).

As the linked video points out, from 40-60% of everything on the internet is fake, or put there by robots, paid trolls, or deep fakes. The internet is no longer the place where we can go and see a wide-range of diverse opinions. Unless we go down to dark web strata, we are seeing what the owners of the web want us to see, and many of us are beginning to think what they what us to think, but, more importantly, buy what they want us to buy—or inject into our bodies what they want us to inject. The algorithmns say so.

How do we extricate ourselves from this algorithmn trap yet still maintain our connections to the larger world without becoming slaves to the owners of the web?

Please watch the linked video, and please, tell me what you think!

CLICK HERE TO WATCH THE VIDEO

PS: the above is a thumbnail sketch of my experience and not meant to be the entirety of the dead internet theory—that’s why I value your input: it enriches the Substack community experience.