Walled, walled web and hidden censorship

The notion of the wild, wild web gets ever weaker. Regulation of the web is largely privatised, down to the whims and ideology of sites.

We should think of the walled, walled web, especially Facebook, but the policies of major social media, which seek to keep users in and on their site as long as possible, thus sucking out maximum data and advertising revenue, are the major de facto web regulator - and their supposed commitment to free speech is every bit as sincere as the press's.

That means any state regulation of them is baaaad, an attack on freedom of speech - and let's not use the t-word please...

The wild, wild web persists when it comes to tax avoidance, an issue with several of the billionaire press barons too. The industries have in common neo-liberal, fundamentalist free market owners. There is a current fightback in Europe, with several states pursuing legal cases against Google and its use of internal billing to minimise declared profit and focus this in low tax Ireland.

Contrastingly, Facebook and Instagram freak at the (female) nipple (helping to inspire the #freethenipple campaign), and in this case seem to have worked to undermine the meme protesting across a controversial rape sentencing in America, protecting the privileged (the censoring itself having gone viral, they've now said this was a technical glitch and will stop).

Interesting point on privacy - held up for private citizens but not for those in the public eye or on matters of public record.

This in the week when the EU-mandated right to forget saw Axl Rose apply for a takedown of prominent Axl is fat meme images.

See this Distractify post for more.