Bypassing Big Tech Censorship – Election Integrity and More

Big Tech’s alignment with the radical left’s agenda has gone beyond apparent, into brazen, especially since the adent of the Covid era. And that poses a conundrum for a society that has become largely dependent on the internet for news, information, communication and organizing.

Without directly banning inconvenient content, the big tech platforms often manipulate it in ways that deliberately limit its distribution or discourage the discourse even beginning through practices like demonetizing, and unexplained “strikes,” for violation of nebulous “policies.” What policy, exactly? They won’t specify. These big platforms can have content creators walking on eggshells, not wanting to use the wrong words and anger the algorithm gods. That leads to self-censorship.

The latest video I’ve uploaded to my own DanMcGrathDotNet YouTube Channel was a 10-minute Election Integrity Watch update Called “Is Voter Fraud on the Rise?” The channel has around 1,300 subscribers, most of whom initially signed on for political content. After a week, that video had 15 views. Some of my older videos with similar subject matter have garnered tens of thousands of views. A couple have even topped a million. Something ain’t right.

Similarly, I made a post about the video on the Election Integrity Watch facebook page that I manage. It has about 20,000 followers. According to it’s own analytics after three days, Facebook had showed the post to fewer than 100 of them.

Clearly, these communication channels aren’t working anymore, as big tech has decided this particular subject matter ist verboten.

It’s a pretty big problem in a “democracy,” when discussions about problems in the election system and how to improve it are being discouraged and squelched in the modern, digital town squares.

Fortunately, these particular big tech companies engaging in stealth censorship (so-called shadow-banning and reach limitation) are no longer our only options. After seeing the dismal performances on YouTube and Facebook that I described, I decided to experiment with an alternative video platform and uploaded the video that got 15 views on YouTube to Rumble. With a brand-new account, having zero subscribers and without promoting it on any other platform, the video was viewed over 150 times during the first couple days.

Again, my YouTube Channel, which has been going for over a decade has 1,300 subscribers. By contrast, my Rumble channel has been active for a few days and doesn’t have a single subscriber yet. Still, the Rumble upload outperformed YouTube with 10 times as many views. I was stunned by that outcome. 

After seeing the results of my experiment, it’s obvious that Rumble will be the new home of Election Integrity Watch videos. Similarly, my X.com account will take precedence over Facebook for any election or political micro-blogging content, from now on.

Speaking of blogging, In the earlier days of the internet, when a nascent Facebook wasn’t much known outside collegiate circles, the quickly-evolved “blog-o-sphere” was where political dissent and news outside the scope of corporate media was disseminated and discussed. But, social media came along and won everyone over with it’s open nature, free-to-use business model and ease of connecting with people. Unfortunately, it’s changed and no longer serving us as it once did. Centralized power is no bueno and that plainly includes the power to control the flow of information. A return to independently hosted content is needed to avoid the closing walls of big-tech censorship. Of course, search engines also remain part of the problem and AI chat bots are naturally going to follow the same pattern, but even in those realms, there are more free and open alternatives.

For my projects, including Election Integrity Watch, I’m going to continue hosting my own websites and at the same time, explore the possibilities of emerging platforms like Rumble and Gettr and see how Elon Musk’s changes to Twitter/X play out in real life.

I’ll continue using YouTube (for now) for the “fluff” content I produce, like “Uncle Dan’s Synth Shop” and “Pilot After 50,” but anything important, political, and especially relating to election integrity will be hosted from now on at Rumble. I hope you’ll check it out and subscribe to my new Rumble channel(s)!

Push back. Resist big tech censorship. Speak your mind. Use alternatives. Uphold the truth!