November 28th 2020 - Escaping the Digital Great Purge

The Great Purge in Soviet Union, one of the darkest chapters of 20th Century, gives not only depressing example of industrial-scale political repression but also an example of such repression being completely arbitrary and irrational. Between 1936 and 1938 anyone unfortunate enough to live under Soviet power had ample reasons to fear being sent to gulag and executed. What made those days even more was tthe absolute lack of any sensible system or method in choosing potential victims of persecution. People were pronounced enemies of the state whether they were really opposed to Stalin's rule or not; many victims were just ordinary people who couldn't have cared less about politics and who just tried to mind their own business and live their ordinary lives within the econnomic and cultural confines of Soviet system. Many of the victims of the repression were even enthusiastic Stalin supporters and most of the historians agree that the Purge ultimately weakened the very system it had been intended to protect.

A lot of macabre absurdities of that era is being replayed in today's world, thanks to COVID-19 and social networks, that enthusiastically took the role of 21st Century equivalents of Gestapo and NKVD. Just like in 1930s USSR, today many experience their own version of trip to gulag, this time to thanks to Facebook which began its own purge under pretext of eliminating fake news and hate speech on Internet. And, just like in those times, victims are ordinary and apolitical business people who just minded their own business and tried to live within economical and cultural confines of world's most powerful social network. Some of those horrror stories are even more horrible because the bans occur not due to overenthusiastic clerks and civil officials, but the nameless, faceless, unstoppable force of algorithms that can't be reasoned with. Stories about victims of Digital Great Purge those in the end found their way even to mainstream media.

By another macabre coincidence, publication of this story coincided with the news about Bitcoin launching its Libra in January 2021. Many in cryptosphere greeted Libra with skepticism, and that skepticism is even more justified when it appears that widespread use of Libra might bring even more people at the mercy of life-destroying censorship and bans based on unfathomable and faceless algorithms. Decentralisation of social networks and finding proper alternatives to Facebook under these circumstances is becoming increasingly important task.

Posted Using LeoFinance ^Beta