YouTube Putting Unfashionable History in the Memory-Hole
George Orwell’s 1984 is famous for many prescient concepts. 2020 and 2021 have continually demonstrated just how prescient.
One of the concepts Orwell gave us is becoming an increasing reality in our technotalitarian state, The Memory Hole – a small chute leading to a large incinerator designed to eradicate any information the ruling regime wanted gone:
In the walls of the cubicle there were three orifices. To the right of the speakwrite, a small pneumatic tube for written messages, to the left, a larger one for newspapers; and in the side wall, within easy reach of Winston’s arm, a large oblong slit protected by a wire grating. This last was for the disposal of waste paper. Similar slits existed in thousands or tens of thousands throughout the building, not only in every room but at short intervals in every corridor. For some reason they were nicknamed memory holes. When one knew that any document was due for destruction, or even when one saw a scrap of waste paper lying about, it was an automatic action to lift the flap of the nearest memory hole and drop it in, whereupon it would be whirled away on a current of warm air to the enormous furnaces which were hidden somewhere in the recesses of the building.
[More info on the Memory Hole can be found below if this is a new concept to the reader.]
Today we get news of the digital Memory Hole being fired up. From MIT Technology Review:
YouTube announced new rules around hate speech on Wednesday that prohibit videos promoting Nazi ideology or denying the existence of the Holocaust or other well-documented violent events like the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School. Thousands of channels are expected to be shut down. But now multiple teachers are complaining that videos uploaded to educate people about Nazi history have been deleted, the Guardian reported.
The whole campaign against Nazi History feels, well, very much like something the Nazis would do.
Free-speech-positive service Odysee has a feature to import YouTube channels. Good-faith proponents of accurate history would be wise to take advantage as soon as possible. The cliche, Those who do not know history are doomed to repeat it exists for a good reason. We do not want more Nazis; deleting footage of the Nazis is a major step toward opening a future where Nazism – or its ideas, repackaged – will meet much less resistance.
Normal people are going to have to work to protect the world against Google (YouTube’s parent company) creating a doomed future built on fashionable ignorance.
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From Wikipedia (for now, anyway):
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