When News Becomes Control: The Crisis of Modern Journalism
фотоколаж: facebook Служба зовнішньої розвідки України
Source: Author’s Facebook page
We’ve always lived in a world where journalists are legally responsible for their words. Remember how many lawsuits Donald Trump filed against the American media — he may be wrong, but he has the right to do it. But whom can we hold accountable today? The anonymous Telegram channel “Joker” can write that you and I are lovers?
It’s one thing to marvel at technology — we can now even create AI-generated photos of our weddings — but why should we accept false information as truth? If someone is not legally accountable for their statements, this is not freedom of speech.
What we are seeing is the replacement of freedom with manipulation. Durov, a product of the Lubyanka system, understands these mechanics perfectly.
The same applies to Musk’s social media platforms. Algorithms are not freedom of speech.
When we open “X” and see hundreds of thousands of tweets from Elon Musk, Donald Trump, or Vance, this is not freedom of thought — it’s programmed delivery. We don’t even see labels marking paid content. We are led to believe this reflects public opinion, but it’s just curated, paid messaging.
When TikTok flooded Romanian users with all of Călin Georgescu’s posts, that wasn’t freedom of speech — it was manipulation. And if Trump wanted to buy TikTok to show only his videos, that would be manipulation too, not freedom.
I am certain that when such manipulations reach a critical point, humanity will react. Without legal mechanisms of accountability, this could lead to a violent uprising against the system, as has happened in the past under authoritarian regimes. Today, under the guise of “freedom of speech,” we are being sold the illusion of freedom while actually being subjected to manipulation. And this is precisely what I want to prevent.
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