How do you feel about global players dictating what you can and cannot read? Do you prefer the choice removed from you, or do you prefer to make your own decisions when reading and researching opinions? Critical thinkers are kidding themselves if they think the Internet offers a choice.

Internet freedom faces its largest threat to date: a new partnership between Google and an organisation funded largely by billionaire capitalist vulture, George Soros. The new partnership, also backed by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, will “fact-check” news stories on the Internet and deem if they are worthy or not of your attention.

Erica Anderson, Partnerships Manager at Google News Lab, made the little known announcement in late October 2017, that Google will partner with the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN), based at the Poynter Institute; largely funded by Soros’ Open Societies Foundation. Ms Anderson thinks this move is okay.

Shortly before the partnership occurred, Soros was criticised for donating $18 billion to his foundation, an organisation known to incite and “colour revolutions,” and sway long-term political agendas. Some of these agendas include the installation of US-friendly governments.

The IFCN and Google will work within the Code of Principles, expanding it into new regions without charging for the fact-checking tools.

Facebook has also partnered with the Poynter Institute, launching its “disputed” tag to attach to any stories considered false by fact-checking organisations. Stories flagged by Facebook will be passed on for further fact-checking to determine if they require censoring.

More than 60 fact-checking organisations have been launched across six continents, courtesy of the IFCN. Of those organisations, 25 are signatories of the IFCN’s Code of Principles – a minimum requirement for being accepted by Facebook as a third-party fact checker. This in itself means Facebook is controlled by less than 25 organisations to monitor and shape international viewpoints.

Facebook aside, media companies who have partnered with Poynter include USA TODAY network, the Associated Press, as well as the Charles Koch Foundation, Koch, as in the billionaire Koch brothers.

The Google-IFCN partnership was announced shortly prior to social media giant executives from Twitter, Facebook and Google testifying before the Senate and House Intelligence Committees on the Russian meddling fiasco. This could be viewed as a move to appease the powers above, that they will comply with and enforce future Internet censorship.

Hungarian born George Soros experienced backlash in mid-2017 when Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban accused him of funding the “new, mixed, Muslimized Europe” by pouring millions into liberal NGOs to influence the European Union into accepting asylum seekers. Prime Minister Orban labelled Soros as a “mafia network” that needed to be countered, and warned in July of the stand needed to be taken against “the media they operate.”

Soros, who once admitted he “fancied himself as some kind of god or … economic reformer” may see his wish come true.

But there’s one way to fight against censorship…

Continue engaging with your critical thinking ability. It is becoming an extinct, almost super-human quality that most in power would quickly see extinguished.

Invest your time in independent platforms; detach yourself from Facebook; and always, always compare and check your own facts.

Trust only yourself and form your own opinions rather than sheeple with the popular viewpoint.

Do not leave the task to capitalist vultures whose ego is on par with megalomania, where their agenda is to stop you from actively engaging in the world around you. Because once you do, they lose power over you.

© 2018 copyright reserved, Aral Bereux, D. News.