Well I do agree that there is something weird going on when groups like Daesh/ISIS, the Taliban, and say, HK protesters and Egypt Arab Spring rioters, can use FVEYs-based social media corps to connect with and coordinate with their followers, to do what is basically terrorism, but when a FVEYs-based actor has some message, not even organizing violence like the preferentially-treated actual terrorists, they can get de-platformed. There are high profile cases where the opposite slips through the cracks: like the terrible NZ mosque massacre--where it seems social media provided safe harbor for people to spread their evil views and radicalize. But normally it seems like any 'critical of the West' message, or 'critical of the preferentially-treated actual terrorist groups' message, can be de-platformed, while the actual terrorists can use the platforms to radicalize and recruit.

A conspiratorial reading would see social media as an outgrowth of a CIA program to create chaos and support resistance groups and multiple sides of conflicts, in order to advance FVEYs and corporate interests against international competitors, but I'm not sure that's the right lens to view this through. It might be, but I think the reason for the politicization of speech adn social media is more domestic.

Anyway, people who don't think the preferential-treatment to certain groups is weird seem to have a doublethink attitude about it: they simultaneously deny it is a thing (and gaslight about there not being any unprincipled bias), while defending there is a "difference" inherent and essential between the platformed and de-platformed groups: in other words, trying to justify the very editorial standards they simultaneously try to pretend don't exist.

I mean, that in itself is weird: if you're going to want to impose your bias on the world, then own it. Don't impose it, and pretend to justify it, then also pretend it isn't happening. I think it's weird because it seems to display that these 'righteous warriors' supporting those editorial standards are conflicted in some way as to the standards themselves...

A more conspiratorial view would be that social media only permits voices that somehow align with its collective interests, which perhaps stretch back to the security and intelligence organizations that supercharged their initial spread.

I agree with some level of information control (such as how the Chinese government does it) but I think there need to be clear and transparent standards that people can understand, what speech is OK and what is not, and why (such as how the Chinese government does it). The situation in the West looks very shady and deceptive to me. Standards seem arbitrary and divorced from moral principles, and allegiances and favoritism seem opportunist and, frankly, repulsive. All while the 'dominant narrative' as portrayed in the media seems to simply be running cover for the fact that there is any bias at all, in effect trying to gaslight people into believing the existence of the very objective and impartial morally principled standards their censorious and editorialized actions belie.

What is unfortunate I think is the amount of support such weird bias gets on HN. I struggle to understand that connection between this audience, and that strange, weird politicization and censorship of speech as occurs in the West. I struggle to understand it on its face, but also more so when you consider the obvious ancestry of communities like these in the original free-wheeling "lectronic fringe", people who believed in free speech and the free exchange of information. I fail to understand the demographics of the HN audience, and how they fit into the tech employment space. If you know what I mean.

Anyway...it's unfortunate that this sort of perspective is the very thing that I think would be likely to be downvoted or flagged, to me inexplicably. It's not that I can't understand why people would take the view of the censors. I totally get that. It's that I don't get how these people came to be so strongly associated with a tech audience. That to me is inexplicable.

In short, why has engineering become politicized to such a weird extent? And why do engineers find themselves, seemingly, judging from many reactions on HN, aligning with the (to me) utterly bizarre (and morally agnostic, subjective) censorious views of the tech overlords? Is it just that's where their paychecks come from (or where they hope to have them come from--in an 'aspirational future FAANGer' sense?), and they are retroactively trying to justify their allegiance by convincing themselves they belief all this claptrap? Or is the ideological geling deeper? I'm confounded about that part. It sickens me, how off-the-rails, dangerous and un-thought-out alot of this so-called 'righteous crusading' is.

I feel like if you try to talk sense to people 'incensed' by these topics, it's like trying to be the guy in that German bar where Hitler was rabble-rousing the crowd against the Jews, trying to talk everyone down and cool off. It's like a scary phenomenon we are witnessing, and the weird thing is, like almost nobody seems to recognize that. I really feel there are strong echoes of the kind of chaos that overtook Germany between the wars...it's so, so sad to see these things happening in the West...