1984 = 2018

1984 = 2018

Preface: I wrote this essay in 2018: It is interesting how the situation has escalated:

Horrors: ‘The Big Twins’ Twitter and FaceBook now heavily censor posts, and I fear this is the thin end of a wide wedge. Without a doubt, their information vacuum collects every post, text, image taken on phones and computers attached to the accounts, and now their robots view all posts and censor without review or appeal.

In the previous article ‘The House of Fame’ I included twelve images from an exhibition. Some were slightly risqué. However, one’s imagination rules how the content is appraised. When my WordPress posts are published, they are linked to ‘The Big Twins’ and within ten minutes the post was taken down without appeal. ‘The Big Twins’ deemed them obscene. The connotation is horrific: Now, social media dictates whatever people see, they will eventually control how the world is viewed and accepted by those who frequent the sites.

Should we consider the software being used to review the posts as the culprit? No, it is the programmers and those who set the protocols which are cause for concern. Whoever is setting the parameters must have a very closed and distorted mindset. The images were deemed safe by The Nottingham Contemporary Gallery, and the curator considers the exhibition safe for children. As a precaution: a small notice in the reception explains there are images of an ‘adult’ nature in the collection. The few parents attending did not seem concerned that their children were close to the montages, referenced on the warning sign. As already mentioned ‘one’s imagination rules how the content is appraised’.

A reader could not find pornographic imagery or essays on my WordPress pages or articles. In the (now banned) article, I embedded the images in a gallery, so as the pictures would be challenging to review unless the gallery is activated. In reality, the piece is a celebration of a superb exhibition of art, and indeed it is acceptable to show a few examples of the displays. And we should also consider the small number of readers who view my writing? It would not be unreasonable to suggest few if any, children read my articles, and this includes those who are ‘friends’ connected to me by ‘The Big Twins’, so why is there the need for censorship? Surely my readership is so small the danger of corruption is next to impossible.

It is fair enough to ‘clean up’ the internet from dangerous or obscene material. However, to censor an artistic review without appeal is the most dangerous of activities. Those who feel this is an excessive statement should look back to Germany in the 1930’s – Russia from 1946 – 1989 – And Pol Pot’s Cambodia. In every instance, artists and media are censored without appeal.
Interestingly, on the same day, my article about The Nottingham Contemporary’s current exhibition was censored by the ‘The Big Twins’. I watched another video of several police officers beating an innocent man with sticks. He’d suffered a pepper-spraying before his arrest and then sustained a constant barrage of blows to his legs by a police officer wielding a heavy baton. Later in the day, I watched a fake film of cancerous meat being sold as fresh, and I also found two articles with graphic images of animal cruelty.

The police attack, so named cancerous meat and the animal cruelty had a far more significant impact than the montages which contained an innuendo of gay sexual activity. Now, we should take this aspect further. And here is where the real problem occurs because the reader would have to click on the ‘link’ from the ‘Big Twins’ to read the article. Therefore, the software used to censor my link on Facebook and Twitter must have infiltrated the WordPress article: this must be considered sinister and worrying to anyone who can realise this information’s implications.

There is little an individual can do to change the situation. Yes, people will rally around and talk of conspiracy theories. They will not affect these internet monsters who have become so powerful and dictatorial. The real and present danger is they are now taking over what we see and read. We are beginning to see censorship of the most dangerous kind, because, there is no democratic order or civil agreement to their actions. They have now gone beyond government, and this to my mind is a threat to every human’s freedom.