There exists an unattributed brilliant quote of brutally honest and irreverent nature in describing the decadent vastness at the height of the British Empire (though Indian politician and activist Shashi Tharoor ungraciously takes credit for in a 2016 historical text), “The sun never sets in the British Empire, because even God wouldn’t trust an Englishman in the dark.”
The wry and smarmy commentary towards the overextended and overtaxed colonies of the crown has many variations heard over the years with interchangeable derogatory terms for “Englishman” including “the sons of bitches”, “the bastards”, and worse meets protocol in the pre-Covid world of intellectual groups of bar degenerates exchanging ideas about history, physics, and the random group of women, who unfortunately chose this particular watering hole to have a girl’s night out.
Given modern context, the damming indictment of colonial nepotism and builders of massive public works projects and critical infrastructure, is a suitable metaphor to use towards F***book and the unrelenting crimes against critical thought that occur on what seems like a daily basis. The entirety of the unfathomable framework, represented by warehouse office parks of servers and unbelievable galaxies of data supported by the annual electromagnetic requirement of a productive industrialized nation, not to mention the politics, is an intriguing parallel to Britain’s domination of the globe during the Victorian era. What cements an exploratory syllogism between the British Empire, and Mark Zuckerberg’s daunting behemoth of a social network, is that both entities were and are impossible to control, and the detrimental cascading effect at a fundamental level was not apparent until dwindling resources and stagnant logical loops produced major cracks in the foundation that were basically the beginning of the end, and emanating from the middle outward.
The world’s largest social media site, which has been highly criticized and much maligned for the poor handling of private information, and the presence of an inherent bias programmed into the actual digital construct of the platform in limiting the electronic voices of certain groups of users, can not get away from its own shadow, and God cannot be blamed for the failure. As the elections looms and promise to be another heated battled between hackers and noxious algorithms spreading propaganda like wildfire, the company now faces the public of challenge in controlling the damage from allowing Holocaust deniers to commandeer the main search function on the site.
Simply typing the phrase “holocaust” in the search bar after logging into one’s account, produces this abomination.
The term “holocaust denial” automatically populates the first result in an otherwise normal list of what appears to be legitimate resources. Interestingly, the page includes two sources citing the F***book coded promotion of Holocaust conspiracies.
Critics are railing at the company’s latest blunder in allowing extremist perspectives to gain prominence over popular and sensible topics. As with past oversights tricking down from the management in failing to remove indecent and unacceptable content, it all comes down to the human moderation teams, and how training dictates the ebb and flow of decency and controversy attempting to coexist. In the worst example of a custodial site blunder, a toddler was shown being beaten and stomped on by an adult was permitted to remain on the social network, and company officials justified this despicable move by adding a warning to individuals about to view the inhuman video instead of removing the unsettling video. The lack of institutional control culminated by the display of child abuse is just another egregious deliberate act of malice by F***book in a volatile trend of corporate policy leading to the shadow banning of institutions and organizations that do no mesh politically with company leadership. At one point in time, there existed dreams of grandeur in hosting a deregulated platform of free speech, however the pervading culture of Silicon valley holds a disdain for any reasonable viewpoint to the right of center, which apparently now includes legitimate education and public awareness efforts regarding the holocaust and related materials.
The abundance of antisemitism currently intertwined with the social justice movement, and specifically Black Lives Matter, has unfortunately spilled over into the social networking and the public education system. While the extreme left brands ultra-conservatives as conspiracy theorists, the irony is that many progressive- oriented curriculums turn a blind eye to the human rights violations of the Holocaust in revising history and failing to teach students the complete facts about the narratives surrounding World War II. The blind envy and hero worship towards Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Castro, and Guevara, is especially appalling, and serves to push a stifling agenda in society and on social media with basic freedoms hanging in the balance. Thanks to public watchdog groups and First Amendment advocates, the intellectually disingenuous games facilitated by the tech tycoons in furtively unleashing toxic propaganda are being identified and brought to the attention of the public and lawmakers.
The response by F***book in attempting to silence critics has been subtle site redesigns, the prevalence of AI bots, an exponentially and increasing confusing array of end user privacy settings, and ambiguous terms and conditions policing community behavior, where the bottom line is that anything and anytime can be deleted for absolutely no reason. While the hypocrisy by the social networks is disconcerting, consumers absolutely have no excuse to continue to engage and fund an industry that supports the antithesis of Democracy and a representative republic. Frustratingly, there are no consequences or any semblance of accountability for the Holocaust stunt, or in the nuanced attack of Conservative ideology.
The horrific reality of a never ending digital dream world does not have on “off” switch, because God feels the need to tabs on the amoral zealots, who wish to rule the world.
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