Why the ‘eKaren’ is trying to control content globally

Our response to the COVID pandemic certainly taught me some practical lessons in human psychology, particularly moral panics.

I don't think I was the only one. Political operatives were learning as well.

Claims of misinformation were the favoured way to shut down disagreement with the official line on COVID.

But now that COVID has become endemic and faded into the static of life, misinformation has taken on a life of its own and is being wielded as a tool to try to control other parts of the national and international conversation.

This sounds very familiar ...

The framing is eerily similar.

If you didn't follow the health recommendations during COVID, it wasn't that you were putting yourself at risk, it was that you were putting granny, the immunocompromised, and maybe even the kids, at risk.

Now, Ms. Inman Grant claims that there are harms lurking on the internet that can only be controlled through censorship.

What are these harms? The industry standards, which Ms. Inman Grant administers, run from child abuse through to hate crimes, giving us a sense of what they might be-serious to trivial.

Who can argue against protecting from child abuse? But if there is child abuse on social media, shouldn't the police be doing something about it rather than requiring social media to merely remove it?

Shouldn't police be monitoring what is put up, who watches it, and then make some arrests at least in the case of child abuse?

If it's a hate crime, like someone being abused for their race, shouldn't the abused be responsible for making a complaint? How can the platform be asked to interfere preemptively?

They are an online commons-it would be like asking the hosts of a dinner party to bounce any of their guests who tell an ethnically coloured joke, outrageous and absurd.