Comment by asveikau
7 hours ago
You have easy access in that you can find things if you look for it.
What that commenter means by easy access is that the information is in mainstream sources pushed to people such that you are likely to know about it without having looked.
For example I made a comment here on HN recently that immigrants commit crimes at fewer rates than US born people. That sends a segment of Americans into a flying rage even though they have access to that information, they were never going to hear it in their ordinary channels, even if they stick to "mainstream" media.
Mainstream sources that control narratives, and are owned by the same extremely wealthy people that we're complaining about now owning TikTok?
Sorry, this doesn't pass the smell test for me.
Right now the Ellison family owns both CBS and the US version of TikTok, so sometimes the connection is kind of literal.
But this complaint is pretty old, I think of Chomsky's Manufacturing Consent. (Setting aside his Epstein connections for a moment) The way we do censorship is much less the methods of a traditional totalitarian state and more like the private sector policing what is acceptable discourse.
The problem with Chomsky's argument is that you can't do anything about it. Every country, every group in power, democracy, republic, chiefdom, &c, is participating in manufacturing consent and even if you fight to gain power, once you gain power you wind up doing the same thing.
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