the progressive era

 “Why do you think you have to seek out obscure websites in order to hear strong antiwar voices?” It is kind of an interesting question that I would like to unpack. Well why do I think we have to seek this out? If I'm being honest I sat here and I tried to think of a normal explanation and for a while I couldn’t, then it hit me.  The answer is censorship.  We all know Google, and we also know how easy it is to find information.  However, it is also extremely easy to censor information on Google.  Schools, Places of work, organizations, and even families can censor  what they want people to look at.  The reality of it is that as easy as it is to find information it's just as easy to hide information.  

I would like to delve deeper into an example of censorship that I’ve seen with Google.  In high school, the students in my school found a video of Pete Davidson talking badly about our high school principal.  Coincidently, Pete Davidson went to my high school and during the time he attended my alma mater, there was a huge controversy that our principal, who is a priest, was doing illegal things that go against the Archdiocese’s rules and values.  The video spread like wildfire around the school and just as fast as everyone found it and heard about it, it was blocked by the school even faster.  My high school was technology based and used Ipads for everything.  The school censored the video through the school wifi network so no one could see it.  The school couldn’t do anything about seeing it at home but the administration went the extra mile to block it from students while they were at school.  I remember one of my teachers explaining that it is extremely easy for the school to censor and monitor what we look up.  Even certain words like (kill, death, guns, porn, slurs, curse words, teachers names, and anything that is negative) could be flagged, meaning the media department at my high school would get a notification and the student would get called to the office.  Though to the students, we may have not understood how easy it was to censor, after four years we started to understand and found ways around it.  We started using hotspots, instead of Google we used websites like DuckDuckGo and Yandex. So yes, there are ways

around censorship and connecting it back to Anti-War we can find information that isn’t censored. 

 

Many social media platforms often have to balance out their content with broader audiences.  Along with these audiences expectations and preferences. Also private companies can choose what content they want to put out and show.  This is because they are not bound by the First Amendment laws. If something about Antiwar is seen as controversial or not in line with social media or apps policies or terms, it might get hidden by the platform causing viewers to not likely see it. That's why those voices might be seen more on alternative sites.