This post isn't for profit so if your going to vote on it please keep your vote at 1% only. I write it only to spread the word of a search engine many maybe familar with but many more may not have heard of or even used. It's called DuckDuckGo and it's a super privacy browser that's easy to use. More and more of my friends that are tech savy are moving across to it and abandoning Google due to moral, ethical and personal reasons.

Unlike Google, DuckDuckGo never tracks you, you don't have to opt out of endless privacy options to stop them following you around the world and deploying adverts targeted at your ip address and the sites you have visited. Google does exactly this by placing a cookie on your laptop or phone.

In the past Google have violated domestic and international laws repeatedly collecting data they had no right to collect on users. Why do you think a big company like Google would collect data on a mass scale? For internal use only to improve their customer experience? If you thought so innocently about such a huge company's motivations you'd be on the highly idealistic side of life which never works out that way.

You can read a 2013 article by the Huffington Post regarding the abuse of Google's monopolistic grasp on search traffic. Google have been sharing such data with corporations. This excerpt from that article sums up Google and Facebook too...

Think of search engines like DuckDuckGo as a cure to a horrific disease that is occurring throughout global society. Huge companies seemingly beyond the control of governments due to their vast financial power spying on every individual and then sharing such data for profit with governments and big organisations. In other words spying for profit.

Of course it's not all about DuckDuckGo, decentralised platforms such as Scorum are vital to a new decentralised eco system that cannot be taken out so easily by any particular large company or even government. Having a blockchain communication platform multiplied on many servers means shutting such systems down becomes incredibly difficult because no one person owns them. That's right everyone who is an active witness on Scorum is doing a big favour to encouraging a world of decentralisation and fighting back against censorship and big tech companies and their invasion of user privacy.

Most will have probably heard about Youtube (owned by Google) and Twitter's deplatforming of conservative speakers on the grounds of political idealogy rather than so called "Hate Speech". Indeed even Black conservatives and far more "liberal" and "classical liberal" speakers have been de-platformed or de-monetised by Youtube, Patreon and Twitter. Whether you are left or right leaning in politics or simply don't care, you should care about private tech companies owning the main forms of communication around the globe and being immune to law suits from private individuals (as it stands now). Their main defense for their current allotted protection against lawsuits is they claim they are not a public service but a private platform, that doesn't really hold much weight because they are true monopolies of online communication now with very little opportunity for smaller companies to operate. That's changing somewhat now with other social platforms emerging who aim to uphold the First Amendment right in the US. We have the founding fathers to thank for the only country which has a law that protects every citizen's right to free speech, even if others take offence to that speech. This has allowed some new tech companies to start up and offer freedom of speech platforms to users throughout the world not just the US.

I'd like to think that Scorum was a freedom of speech platform too, sure it's a sports themed blogging platform but the key is to keep dialogue and debate open even within sports where people will have differing views on contentious issues in sport. Silencing people doesn't work, it makes things work. Instead allowing the free competition of ideas (no matter how bad) on an open platform will allow the best to prevail.

Still the test may come one day where we will really test if such systems as Scorum are decentralized when someone lobbies the actual Scorum team because they don't like some content on the platform - the question is when that time comes will Scorum bow to pressure of big tech companies, governments or will they stand firm with the idea of blockchain being a force for free speech.

The Problems Are Worse than Mere Censorship in the West

You may then think that problems with censorship with companies like Google and Facebook are just a modern day complaint of the privileged with too much time on their hands looking for yet another thing to protest about. If that's your line of thinking, think again...As a recent article written by ThinkProgress describes Google is back working with the communist party in China to create a censorship system that enables the Chinese government to censor any news that reflects negatively on their reputation. In other words Google is working to help the Chinese government continue their building of concentration camps that have so far detained over 1 million muslims for re-education along with other minority groups such as Christians. Google working with China means they will also have a hand in aiding a regime hell bent on destroying Hong Kong's political independence and also Taiwan's right for self determination. Both these nations are struggling to protect their sovereignty from the ever aggressive Chinese regime. There's plenty of reporting from newspapers across the politic spectrum on how bad the Chinese communist regime have been to people like those in Hong Kong, here's a piece by the Guardian. China is also lobbying heavily companies to not actively recognise the self determination of Taiwan as a nation.

Along with the concentration camps and other human right abuses the Chinese government will be able to prevent users from looking up accurate statistics on pollution levels thanks to Google's cooperation with their censorship efforts.

The fact that Google have secretly returned to work with the Chinese government after pulling out some time back also means they are in support of their Social Credit System. A mass surveillance system being adopted across China to police behaviour via surveillance cameras and other means. The Social Credit System marks down anyone the government believes is not "acting appropriately in society" and this has already lead to political activists having their travel restricted to within miles of where they live and in some cases left them virtually house bound. The Social Credit Score idea delivered by the Communist government is basically a tool of tyranny to keep people in check and silence any criticism of their human rights abuses and political monopoly.

The question is whats stopping Google rolling out their Dragon Fly censorship search project in the West? Nothing really. They can easily introduce it under the radar without anyone knowing about it. We already see the act of shadow banning happening on social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook. Google can quiet easily start to censor results in a sly manipulative way by ranking those they deem 'desirable' above those they do not or even to simply remove certain news articles from sites from their results without any prior warning or transparency.

Back to Decentralised Blockchains and Privacy Search

Supporting any private search engine, decentralised social network or decentralised blockchain involved in the communication world, whether that be DuckDuckGo, Steemit, D Tube, Scorum and Diaspora.org or any other will help erode the power from giant corporations hands and thus help prevent them conspiring with tyrannical organisations, governments and conglomerates in their attempts to infringe on peoples privacy and silence critics and peoples right to criticise others, organisations and governments. Put the power back in the individuals hands, not a collective bureaucracy their to dominate our thoughts and feelings.

Free Speech is the corner stone of any healthy eco system, if you shut down free speech and expression there is nothing to keep everyone in check from committing horrendous crimes against others as there is no way to speak out against others - conversation and dialogue are the way to avoid physical conflict and violence - silencing people makes matters worse. Decentralisation is the new corner stone for protecting freedom of expression and preventing others from policing speech to a level where any form of criticism of anything else is to be censored or silenced.

Sneaky Hate Speech Laws and Advocacy

Those that are advocates of "hate speech" laws in places like Canada, America and the UK, the question for you is, who gets to decide what hate speech actually is? For example in Canada, America and the UK there are already laws in place to prevent the incitement of physical violence, so where is the line between what is considered criticism and what is considered hateful drawn? The answer lies in that what is considered hateful is in the eye of the beholder. There lies the importance of drawing a line that all speech is free speech except that which is inciting physical violence to a particular group of people.

If someone hates another group of people that is still free speech, it may not be pleasant speech but so long as that individual is only criticising that group of people or individual and not calling for physical violence then it should be allowed even if it may not be appropriate.

Hate Speech laws stifle debate and speech can be combated by blockchain and decentralization where no one person or group owns a database, owns the moral high ground or it's content. Many witnesses ensure there is no de-platforming of users and their content by one particular group or person.

This article was mainly written to help stimulate debate and thoughts towards giant tech companies and their sheer grip on the communication power of the world and how crypto platforms like Scorum, search engines like Duck Duck Go can help disrupt that industry. Supporting smaller projects and decentralised blockchains will ensure such companies will be kept in checked. Vote with your fingers, choose where to blog and communicate on, if you keep to the main tech giants such as Google, Facebook and Twitter alone, you allow these companies to control most of the world's communication and leave them free to abuse their power with unsavoury regimes.