Pars Today

Pars Today- Perhaps, you may have asked Google Chrome to enter a news site or a political site while Google Chrome has prevented you with the pretext of being insecure. This will be aggravated as the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), presenting a document, has shown that it is going to enhance censorship and prevent publication of information opposed to the interests of this country's government.

According to the report of the Mintpress news website, the document presented by the USAID reveals how the government persuades technological platforms, media institutes and promoters to cooperate with each other to censor major parts of the internet. It seems that the USAID will mainly focus on discovering online information of the individuals who challenge the official narratives of the American government and, as a whole, put the system in challenge with raising questions.

This document is seeking to enforce control over video games and online messages, to distance individuals from the media which are not compliant with the US ruling system and return to the websites that are more liked by the so-called elite. Accordingly, governments should cooperate with promoters in a bid to hamstring the organizations which don't capitulate to official lines. Moreover, the groups supported by the government, like Bellingcat, GRaphika and the Atlantic Council are introduced as the leaders of struggle against incorrect information.

This report pays attention to the gamers and video games and calls for controlling them in the way the social media platforms are controlled.

The advocates of this document claim that the critics can publish incorrect information on the platforms of games like Twitch. This enables users to act in coordination in order to increase followers and publish content on big social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter. Thus, even the platforms which reply limited and very special audience will be remarkably effective.

Incorrect information or undesirable realities

USAID has claimed that, in addition to "incorrect information", it wants to fight "harmful information". Harmful information are the subjects which are correct, but, based on the policymaking of this agency, are considered outside the governance framework. According to this definition, any content- regardless of being correct- which is detrimental or undesirable to the interests of the US government, can potentially be censored. This agency believes that independent media and free social platforms, through creation of a climate for raising of information and different views and parallel narratives, cause growth of critical information.

This report introduces platforms like Reddit, Discord and Chan4 as "conspiring websites" which can help various groups create "populist expertise" and spread alternative views for the American governance and eventually challenge the US government. In addition to game websites, these platforms should also be confronted and pushed to the margin.

During the past decade, the US governmental organizations were working hand-in-hand with the companies of "Silicon Valley" in a bid to support the access of alternative media which question their absolute power. This indicates Washington's increasing ambition.

Disrepute those who are against "us"

One of the most important technics of the USAID to repress independent media is to support affiliated media and promoters of the government's official narrative via propaganda and derange the financial maintenance of critical and challenging media. Another way of this institution is to prevent the publication of these critical media in any possible way including "devaluation of their brand, reputation and prestige of opponents".

Platforms like Google, Facebook and Youtube have changed their algorithms to decrease "critical" content and promote the narrative of the sources favorable to the ruling system. The result is that critical news websites with high quality witnessed the reduction of their traffic overnight; but traditional media such as CNN and NBC News, which have been defeated in the online arena, were promoted to higher ranks of search.

Houses of coup and incorrect information

The USAID has a long record of promoting incorrect information to advance the US interests and this new program for extremist censorship has increased concerns. In 2021, this organization was behind the attempt for color revolution (the insurgence of US advocates) in Cuba. The USAID, has for long, been meddling in Cuba and has designed innumerable schemes, such as infiltration in the scene of Hip-hop music of the country and the effort to organize it as a revolutionary anti-government force.

11 years ago, the USAID secretly created a social network exclusively for Cuba under the name of Zunzuneo. None of the scores of thousands of the users of this application knew that the US government has secretly designed and presented it in the market. This was the concept to create a big service to control Cuba and slowly start to promote the idea of regime change and direct users towards protests with the aim of toppling the government.

The USAID was also complicit in the 2002 coup in Venezuela. This coup led to overthrowing of then democratically elected president "Hugo Chavez" and replacement of a pro-US dictator. Since then, the USAID has tried, through different ways, including financial aids to the self-styled president "Juan Guaido" to topple the Venezuelan democracy.

RM/ME