Another great article from 404 Media highlighting the power that the tech giants have amassed over how how we use the internet.
This brings me, I think, to the elephant in the room, which is the fact that Google has its hands on quite literally every aspect of this entire saga as a vertically integrated adtech giant.
This extreme power over the adtech and online advertising ecosystem is one of the subjects of an FTC antitrust suit against Google.
Oh no! Censorship /s
No need to be sarcastic, in my kingdom I’ll be absolute ruler and “censor” and suppress others as I see fit.
And everybody else is free to do the same and tell me to feck off.
I think censorship in the Fediverse works because you can always find a host which aligns with your ideology. Bad ideas automatically die out if the overwhelming majority of people stop spreading it, not because a giant megacorp decides it’s not a good message to show to their shareholders.
But good ideas can be hidden from users if an admin bans instances or remote users. It’s a new type of censorship.