In a previous contribution I drew your attention to a sudden, sharp drop in the amount of ‘traffic’ this website generates. You won’t see that very often, because most ‘bloggers’ either depend on the commercial aspect of their effort, or aim for the biggest possible ‘reach’ to influence others, and it doesn’t help when you advertise that people are, apparently, reading stuff nobody else is interested in. Now, I’m not monetizing this blog, and I pay all the bills for it myself, out of my own pocket, nor do I promote some kind of ‘shared vision’ or effort to ‘come to power’ myself, and I'm not writing in the service of anyone else. I’m your proverbial ‘Free Thinker’. Still, that doesn’t explain why I would make it known that ‘traffic’ fell off a cliff, recently. So hear me out.
Fluctuations in ‘traffic’ are normal. The Holliday-season. People getting sick and tired of reading the same stuff over and over. Or you actually shocked the ‘regulars’ by stating something they don’t want to hear, or not from you. These fluctuations are either predictable, or accompanied by dissatisfied, even angry comments and emails. No comments, or emails preceded this sudden drop, which has me wondering if the ‘algorithms’ of search engines and social media platforms are to blame? Like I wrote, this happened previously, and it may be the case now. But which subject would trigger such an adjustment of the ‘algorithms’? On this ‘In English’ part of my blog I write about Ukraine most of the time, but the Dutch-language part touches on all kinds of subjects. So who knows? And it may also be that it is not just one controversial subject, but maybe I pissed off someone ‘influential’, who lobbied the owners of the ‘search engines’ and/or social media platforms to put this ‘address’ on the ‘kill-list’, so to speak. After all, we’re deep in the realms of ‘Cancel-Culture-Society’.
Contrary to many others who tend to agree with me, I do not call this ‘censorship’, because you cannot dictate the policy of a private company. I will not accept any pressure to promote content generated by George Soros ‘hacks’, to say it bluntly, while I cannot demand that George Soros is listing this blog as valuable on the websites, search engines and platforms he owns or controls. So, I feel strongly that search engines should be ‘held’ in the public domain, out of reach from lobbyists, whether they are politicians or private citizens, but that is not the case at the moment.
Now then, why do governments, or powerful organizations intervene so as to make certain blogs or websites ‘disappear’? Three obvious, or less obvious reasons. The first reason, invariably quoted as the only reason, is to shield the general public from toxic content, and criminal enterprises. Without debate, or informing anyone, and no possibility to appeal. From this we can already conclude that valid arguments, and inconvenient facts will fall victim too, and if the initiative lays with this or that government, for all practical purposes it is ‘censorship’. The ‘EU’ and other countries demanding to be allowed the right to dictate what private companies can pass on, and what not, and what to promote, and what to kill, is a perversion of the ‘Rule of Law’, and an expression of what is called a ‘Rules Based Society’ these days. Clearly this is extremely harmful if you advertise the recognition of classic liberalism and democracy as the foundation of society. Either you say openly: ‘That shit doesn’t work in our part of the world!’, or you reign in the dogs and accept that awkward opinions reach the public, but under no circumstances do you look for ‘workarounds’, because sooner or later you will be ‘Cancelled’ yourself.
The third reason is something which escapes public debate, but it *may* be the reason behind the phenomenon I described, of a sudden spectacular drop in ‘traffic’, which is being recognized as someone who was correct after all. But with those in power wanting it to ‘spin’ it their way, so as to be seen as the visionaries pulling the world back from the brink of disaster, while they were actually the blind fools who took us to the brink through a whole range of stupid decisions. Silencing the true visionaries in order to claim the credit for a change in policy is something I experienced in management, and I’ve written about it on my Dutch-language blog more than once. Very frustrating, but at least the outcome is not all that bad, unless they ruin everything again. Clearly I’m not referring to this blog, and my own personal perspective, as being far superior to anything you will find elsewhere, and this silencing would be recognizable elsewhere on the internet, on websites and blogs with a similar perspective.
If, and it clearly is a BIG if, my perspective of developments in Ukraine would have been the trigger for an intervention at the ‘algorithm’-level, it might hint at further escalation, silencing opponents, OR it could point towards a shift away from this disastrous strategy of ‘Overextending’ Russia, while denying the people who predicted such an outcome to point out that our ‘saviors’, steering us away from disaster, were actually the blind fools which brought us there. Those politicians who ‘gave’ us this war, much prefer to tell the public that their military experts convinced them, than a bunch of ‘Russian Trolls’, as they would label me, and people like me. The downside, from my perspective, is that these military experts are indeed all over the place to warn the ‘Hotheads’ which are their bosses that they are wrecking our own defensive capabilities, while the chances of winning this war in Ukraine are ‘Zilch’, ‘Nada’, ‘Nothing’, but their general concern is different from mine. More in particular where these military experts are warning their political bosses that they are destroying our chances of winning this upcoming war with China. What upcoming war with China?!? So, I am not interested in receiving any kind of recognition for predicting this outcome if we allow the ‘Blind Man’ to drag us to a ‘Stairway to Heaven', if you get my drift.