Written for researchers and others interested in the many methods available to suppress dissidents' digital voices. These techniques support contemporary censorship online, posing a digital visibility risk for  dissidents challenging orthodox narratives in science.

The Fourth Estate emerged in the eighteenth century as the printing press enabled the rise of an independent press that could help check the power of governments, business, and industry. In similar ways, the internet supports a more independent collectivity of networked individuals, who contribute to a Fifth Estate (Dutton, 2023). This concept acknowledges how a network power shift results from individuals who can search, create, network, collaborate, and leak information in strategic ways. Such affordances can enhance individuals' informational and communicative power vis-à-vis other actors and institutions. A network power shift enables greater democratic accountability, whilst empowering networked agents in their everyday life and work. Digital platforms do enable online content creators to generate and share news that digital publics amplify via networked affordances (such as 💌 likes, " quotes " and sharing via # hashtag communities).

#1 Covering up algorithmic manipulation

Social media users who are not aware about censorship are unlikely to be upset about it (Jansen & Martin, 2015). Social media platforms have not been transparent about how they manipulated their recommender algorithms to provide higher visibility for the official COVID-19 narrative, or in crowding out original contributions from dissenters on social media timelines, and in search results. Such boosting ensured that dissent was seldom seen, or perceived as fringe minority's concern. As Dr Robert Malone tweeted, the computational algorithm-based method now 'supports the objectives of a Large Pharma- captured and politicised global public health enterprise'. Social media algorithms have come to serve a medical propaganda purpose that crafts and guides the 'public perception of scientific truths'. While algorithmic manipulation underpins most of the techniques listed below, it is concealed from social media platform users.

#2 Fact choke versus counter-narratives

#3 Title-jacking

For the rare dissenting content that can achieve high viewership, another challenge is that title-jackers will leverage this popularity for very different outputs under exactly the same (or very similar) production titles. This makes it less easy for new viewers to find the original work. For example, Liz Crokin's 'Out of the Shadows’ documentary describes how Hollywood and the mainstream media manipulate audiences with propaganda. Since this documentary's release, several videos were published with the same title.

#4 Blacklisting trending dissent

After its publication, all three authors experienced censorship on search engines (Google deboosted results for the declaration), social media platforms (Facebook temporarily removed the declaration's page, while Reddit removed links to its discussion) and on video (Youtube removed a roundtable discussion with Florida's Governor Ron DeSantis whose participants questioned the efficacy and appropriateness of requiring children to wear face masks). 

#5 Blacklisting content due to dodgy account interactions or external platform links

Limited visibility filtering also occurs when comments are automatically commented on by pornbots, or feature engagement by other undesirable accounts. For example, posts mentioning the keywords/subjects such as 'vaccine, Pfizer' may receive automated forms of engagement, which then sees posts receiving such "controversial" engagement becoming added to a list ensuring these posts censorship (see 32 mins into Alex Kriel's talk on the 'The Role of Fake Bot Traffic on Twitter/X'.

Social media platforms' algorithms may also blacklist content from external platforms that are not viewed to be credible sources (for example, part of an alternative {alt-right} media), or seen as competing rivals (X penalises the visibility of posts that feature links to external platforms).

#6 Making content unlikeable and unsharable

This newsletter from Dr Steven Kirsch's (29.05.2024) described how a Rasmussen Reports video on YouTube had its 'like' button removed. As Figure 1 shows, users could only select a 'dislike' option. This button was restored for www.youtube.com/watch?v=NS_CapegoBA.

Figure 1. Youtube only offers dislike option for Rassmussen Reports video on Vaccine Deaths- sourced from Dr Steven Kirsch's newsletter (29.05.2024)

Social media platforms may also prevent resharing such content, or prohibit links to external websites that are not supported by these platforms' backends, or have been flagged for featuring inappropriate content.

#7 Disabling public commentary

Social media platforms may limit the mentionability of content, by not offering the opportunity to quote public posts. User's right-to-reply may be blocked, and critiques may be concealed by preventing them from being linked to from replies.

#8 Making content unsearchable within, and across, digital platforms

Social media companies applied search blacklists to prevent their users from finding blacklisted content. Content contravening COVID-19 "misinformation" policies was hidden from search users. For example, Twitter applied a COVID-19 misleading information policy that ended in November, 2022. In June 20023, META began to end its policy for curbing the spread of "misinformation" related to COVID-19 on  Facebook and Instagram. 

#9  Rapid content takedowns

Social media companies could ask users to take down content that was in breach of COVID-19 "misinformation" policies, or automatically remove such content without its creators' consent. In 2021, META reported that it had removed more than 12 million pieces of content on COVID-19 and vaccines that global health experts had flagged as misinformation. YouTube has a medical misinformation policy that follows the World Health Organisation (WHO) and local health authorities guidance. In June 2021, YouTube  removed a podcast in which the evidence of a reproductive hazard of mRNA shots was discussed between Dr Robert Malone and Steve Kirsch on Prof Bret Weinstein's DarkHorse channel. Teaching material that critiqued genetic vaccine efficacy data was automatically removed within seconds for going against its guidelines (see Shir Raz, Elisha, Martin, Ronnel, Guetzkow, 2022). The WHO reports that its guidance contributed to 850,000 videos related to harmful or misleading COVID-19 misinformation being removed from YouTube between February 2020 and January 2021.

PropagandaInFocus describes how LinkedIn users are subject to a policy of misinformation that prevents content being shared that 'directly contradicts guidance from leading global health organisations and public health authorities'. Dr David Thunder shared an example of his automated LinkedIn post removal for (1) sharing a scientific study that confirmed that children are at negligible risk of suffering severe disease from COVID-19, and (2) questioning the FDA decision to approve Emergency Use Authorisation for COVID-19 vaccines for children as young as 6 months old. No matter that many other studies confirm both positions, LinkedIn took this post down and threatened to restrict his account.

#10 Creating memory holes

Extensive content takedowns can serve a memory-holing aim, whereby facts and memories of the past become suppressed, erased or forgotten for political convenience. Long after the COVID-19's "pandemic", an Orwellian Ministry of Truth continues to memory-hole many health authority decision makers' failures, plus those of the mainstream media's and most national governments. As discussed here on YouTube by Mary Lou Singleton, Meghan Murphy and Jennifer Sey, such failures included: mandating masking and school-closures for children (who were never at risk); never questioning the official COVID-19 statistics (such as CNN's 'death ticker'); straight quoting Pfizer press releases as "journalism", whilst mocking individuals who chose to 'do their own research'. 

Dr Mark Changizi presents four science moments on memory-holing. In X video 1 and X video 2, he highlights how memory-holing on social media is very different from its traditional form. He uses X (formerly X) as an autobiographical tool, creating long threads that serve as a form of visual memory that he can readily navigate. The unique danger of social media account removal/suspension for censorship extends beyond losing one's history-of-'use' on that platform, to include all 'mentions' related to its content (ranging from audience likes, to their reply and quote threads). This changes the centrally-controlled communication history of what has occurred on a social media platform. Such censorship violates the free speech rights of all persons who have engaged with that removed account, even its fiercest critics, as they also lose an historical record of what they said. 

By contrast decentralised publications (such as hardcopy publications) are very hard for authorities to memory hole, since sourcing all hardcopies can be nearly impossible for censors. While winners can write history, historians who have access to historical statements can rewrite it. As COVID-19 memory-holing on social media platforms challenges such rewriting, its users must think around creating uncensorable records (such as the book Team Reality: Fighting the Pandemic of the Uninformed). In  X video 3, he highlights that freedom of expression is a liability, as expressions push reputation chips on the table. The more claims one stake's, the greater the risk to one's reputation if they're wrong. So, another aspect of memory holing lies in an individual's potential desire for memory-holing their own platform content, should they prove to be wrong. In X video 4, Dr Changizi also spotlights that the best form of memory-holing is self-censorship, whereby individuals see other accounts been suspended, or removed for expressing particular opinions. The witnesses then decide not to express such opinions, since it might endanger their ability to express other opinions. While such absence of speech is immeasurable, it would seem the most powerful memory-holing technique. Individuals' silencing their own voices do not create history.

#11 Rewriting history

Linking back to the Fact Choke technique are attempts at historical revisionism by health authoritians, and their allies. An example of this are claims in the mainstream media that critics of the orthodox narrative were "right for the wrong reasons" regarding the failure of COVID-19 lockdowns, the many negative impacts of closing schooling, businesses, and enforcing mandatory vaccination policies.

#12 Concealing the motives behind censorship, and who its real enforcers are

Social media platforms not only hide algorithmic suppression from users, but may also be misused to hide from users the full rationale for censorship, or who is ultimately behind it. Professor David Hughes prepared a glossary of deceptive terms and their true meanings (2024, pp 194-195) to highlight how the meaning of words is damaged by propaganda. A term resonating with technique #9 is “Critical” - pretending to speak truth to power whilst turning a blind eye to deep state power structures. 

The official narrative positioned COVID-19 as a (i) pandemic that had zoonotic (animal-to-human) origins, and alternate explanations were strongly suppressed. As this is the least likely explanation, other hypotheses merit serious investigation as they are more plausible. SARS-COV-2 might have stemmed from (ii) an outbreak at the Wuhan Lab's "gain of function" research, or a (iii) deliberate release in several countries from a biological weapons research project?  Some critics even dispute the existence of SARS-COV-2, alleging that (iv) viral transmission is unproven, and that the entire  COVID-19 "pandemic" is a psychological propaganda operation.

By silencing dissident views like these, social media platforms stop their users from learning about the many legitimate COVID-19 debates that are taking place. This is not a matter of keeping users "secure" from "unsafe" knowledge, but rather networked publics being targeted for social control in the interests of powerful conspirators. In particular, the weaponised deception of social media censorship suits the agenda of the Global Public-Private Partnership (GPPP or G3P), and its many stakeholders. As described by Dr Joseph Mercola in The Rise of the Global Police State, each organisational stakeholder plays a policy enforcement role in a worldwide network striving to centralise authority at a global level.

Figure 2. Global Public-Private Partnership (G3P) stakeholders - sourced from IainDavis.com (2021) article at https://unlimitedhangout.com/2021/12/investigative-reports/the-new-normal-the-civil-society-deception.

G3P stakeholders have a strong stake in growing a censorship industrial complex to thwart legitimate dissent. Critiques of the official COVID-19 "pandemic" measures are just one example  The industrial censorship complex also strives to stifle robust critiques of (1) climate change "science", (2) "gender affirming" (transgender) surgery, (3) mass migration (aka the Great Replacement), (4) and rigged "democratic" elections, amongst other "unacceptable" opinions. Rather than being for the public's good, such censorship actually serves the development of a transhumanist, global technocratic society. The  digital surveillance dragnet of the technocracy suits the interests of a transnational ruling class in maintaining social control of Western society, and other vassals. This will be expanded upon in a future post tackling the many censorship and suppression techniques that are being against (ii) accounts.

N.B. This post is a work-in-progress and the list above is not exhaustive- kindly comment to recommend techniques that should be added, and suggestions for salient examples are most welcome.