It's funny how back in the mid-2000s I thought the Internet couldn't be tamed. I thought it was stable in its instability, that the "Wild West" aspect was a permanent feature. But China has been able to do it to a great extent and in America we see control asserting through the intermediaries of Facebook and Twitter where the NY Post was banned for publishing a story on Hunter Biden's laptop.
Even voting, once blessedly (and cursedly - see Chicago) local, has been centralized via the software of three large companies.
Communication on the 'net seems to want to centralize and therefore monetize. There's a market for providing a curated and pre-approved experience.
We saw it back in the day even in the tiny world of Catholic blogs where the antiquated “blogroll” list was trumped by paid platforms like Patheos and National Catholic Register. Star bloggers were hired and sometimes fired, the latter in the case of Mark Shea and Simcha Fisher who did not quite understand their new role as paid eunuchs. Twitter is now firing folks it doesn’t like as well. Bye Trump and MTG.
Fortunately fearless voices are still finding a way via Substack, Telegram, and others. Ideally free speech on the ‘net is like water, which often finds a way through despite dams and other obstructions. The taming of the Internet is not complete despite the centralization; after all, there would be no UK Daily Mail story on Ray Epps without the water of free speech getting through to enough people to reach the Mail.
Still, it's likely some in the regime are looking at the Ray Epps story and learning lessons or coming up with strategies on how to suppress future Eppsies. The FBI is too big to fail. Just ask Ted Cruz.
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