A World Without Forgiveness.
Imagine a world where the letter of the law is applied without forgiveness, mercy nor regret. “Anything you say can and will be used against you", is a mantra that is spoken to any person being processed by police in the United States, and now being ruthlessly applied to anybody, at any time, who has ever spoken on social media.
No, this is not another ignorant rant on “cancel culture", or anything similar to that: just hear me out.
One of, and arguably, the *only* good thing to come out of Elon Musk’s Twitter 2.0, was the discovery that corporations were (and likely, still are) able to buy access to silence dissent. If you can’t see how that is a non-partisan issue — I, unfortunately, cannot help you.
Now, let us say, that you found out something despicable about a corporation, published it on Twitter, and the tweet gained traction: the corporation in question could purchase the right to have you silenced on Twitter. Your account would be permanently deboosted at the corporations beckoning.
Then we had the explosion of disinformation around elections that happened in the last several major elections on social media, and the social companies started sharing their intelligence. Now, since you are marked on one platform, you become marked on all platforms! Even if what you said was undeniably true, and you only were marked in a play for pay scam.
You are now shut off from social media, and the entire digital economy, simply for daring to expose corruption. You have no recourse — there is no forgiveness for you.
This is increasingly where we’re headed-no, where we are-as a society now. You can simply be shut off, without mercy, and completely, at the whim of a corporation. We live under a type of digital fascism that is just as, if not, more dangerous than any form that has arisen previously.
No secret police are needed, the digital airwaves and endless access serve the purpose. And if you speak up, you can be shut up, without anyone the wiser.
Oh what a double edged sword social media has become!
