Internet Censorship Topic of World Social Website Reporter’s Talk at UWM

World Socialist Web Site reporter Andre Damon explained to an audience at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee  about why people read “fake news” and gave insight into why he believes censorship is taking over a lot of media’s content.

The International Youth and Students for Social Equality, also known as IYSSE, held the public event in the UW-Milwaukee West Ballroom.

“Fake news is what the government wants you to read or in other words what the government wants you to not know,” Damon said. “It all has the intent to mislead or damage an agency, entity, or person with a number of outright fabricated headlines to increase readership, online sharing, and Internet click revenue.”

The IYSSE is an on-campus organization that is dedicated to mobilizing young people and international workers in a fight against capitalism and the socialist transformation of society, according to the IYSSE website.

“We are the only socialist group on campus and we have weekly meetings discussing world developments as well as the need to politically organize the international working class,” says Christopher Davion, assistant director and member of the IYSSE.

The organization focuses on a plethora of other different topics too, rather it be social equality, international unity, historical truth, and most of all internet freedom. That’s why they joined forces with the World Socialist Web Site to spread their knowledge to the student body on ways their voices and truth can be heard.

The majority of the world has no idea that the United States Government is in collaborations with Google, Facebook, Twitter, and other informational technology corporations, with hopes of implementing massive restrictions on internet access to socialist, antiwar, and progressive websites, Damon Announced. He even argued that countries overseas are having their fair share of involvement and capitalist governments in Europe and throughout the world are enacting similar repressive policies.

Damon continued with, “It’s been nearly 29 years since the World Wide Web has been created and the world has been changed immensely due to the usage of the internet.”

In 2017, the average social media usage of global internet users amounted to 135 minutes per day, up from 126 daily minutes in the previous year, according to Statista, the Statistics portal. With all the usage being on social media and news retrieving outlets Damon includes, many wonder why the term ‘fake news’ now has a significance.

The members of the IYSSE and members of the World Socialist Web Site took off with the Censored Campaign because they are simply terrified. The thought of having growing mass opposition to social inequality and war, strikes high nerves of people and tends to have them looking confused on what direction they should go in when it comes to addressing government officials, according to the IYSSE.

“It’s a non-developed issue in all honesty, hiding reality from people and not wanting to identify with real life scenarios that ultimately lead to harm caused,” said Damon.

while attending the meeting, Damon even showed tweets and posts that the creator of Facebook, Mark Zuckerburg wrote addressing the issue with censorship.

“We built Facebook to help people stay connected and bring us closer together with the people that matter to us. That’s why we’ve always put friends and family at the core of the experience. Research shows that strengthening our relationships improves our well-being and happiness,” he continued, “you’ll see less public content like posts from businesses, brands, and media. And the public content you see more will be held to the same standard it should encourage meaningful interactions between people.”

Even the few audience members who were in the crowd had questions about what actions could be taken to have more freedom of speech online without their rights being taken away by censorship.

“I think that taking away people’s freedom of speech rights online is pretty terrible,” UW-Milwaukee student Mike Rusch said. “That’s why we have the Constitution and for the government to try and tell us what we can and can’t say on social media is cruel as hell if you ask me.”

With explanations like these, this is a reason on why exactly the IYSSE and the World Socialist Website have been created. According to each organization’s website, their meetings explore the political context of efforts to censor the internet, examine the real meanings of fake news, and discuss political strategy to mobilize the working class in defense of democratic rights.