And I would have gotten away with it too, if it wasn’t for those meddling kids!

With all due respect to Matt Taibbi, who I’ve praised on these boards many times, there would be more working class censors if they had the platforms to censor on, because the blue-collars have as many biases and blinkers as the white-collars (although almost no one wears white dress shirts to the office anymore).

He is correct that the current matrix of censorship is overwhelmingly controlled by our “useless aristocrats” — because they have the money and the positions with which to do it.
“They are simultaneously illiterate and pretentious, which is very hard to pull off.”

Taibbi’s speech, briefly quoted at Gringo’s link, has been referenced a couple of times by other commenters here.
It’s a classic that deserves dissemination.

Red State had a review, but you can get the whole thing at Matt’s Substack.

https://redstate.com/smoosieq/2024/09/29/matt-taibbi-delivers-an-absolute-work-of-art-in-defense-of-free-speech-at-rescue-the-republic-event-n2179934

https://www.racket.news/p/my-speech-in-washington-rescue-the
“My Speech in Washington: “Rescue the Republic” —
Freedom of speech isn’t just a legal right, but a way of life.”

Which is why unfettered speech (that’s what makes it “free”) is the basis of the First Amendment: over time, some of the experts conform to reality and some don’t; that IS the filtering process.

Which is why having a corrupt and biased media is so pernicious: if the public never even gets to SEE what reality is, then they have to listen to “experts” about what conforms and what doesn’t.

Which is why the elites want desperately to control the publication of everything.

Kind of a never-ending spiral of recursion, once you get started in the censoring game.

That’s because most of them are.
The CNN post Kate linked about Walz vs Vance was a refreshing change!
https://www.cnn.com/2024/09/24/politics/fact-check-tim-walz-project-2025-donald-trump-jd-vance/index.html

Part of the problem is that the “fact” “checkers” generally come with a pre-loaded bias that causes them to discard any actual facts that don’t agree with their position, and won’t check to see if their own side is doing or saying something that is the same as what they disagreed with from the other side.

Two cases in point:
A lot of what the first author, Jon Allsop, says is generally correct theoretically, but keep reading for the unexamined premises that invalidate what he does in practice.
https://www.cjr.org/the_media_today/dnc_fact_checking_harris_speech.php

This is a Utah attorney (two strikes?) who doesn’t seem to recognize that the standard he is using to deny Trump his vote would also require he not vote for Harris — or basically ANY Democrat candidate.

https://www.deseret.com/opinion/2024/10/03/trump-no-policy-victory-can-compensate-for-failure-of-character/
TBF, he doesn’t say he’s voting for Kamala, but a lot of people taking the same position have publicly made that choice.

I take the position that (a) Trump’s policy victories are sufficient to vote for him over any current Democrat; and (b) Trump’s character failures are no worse than those of any current Democrat.

Further, people have clearly made choices for policy over character in the past (Ted Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, …), and it may be that there is no clear way to avoid that dilemma in elections, given the procedures we use for selecting candidates.

A cogent summary of Glenn’s thesis in his post.
Of course, he has a lot more details buttressing that claim!
RTWT, and also the comments.
As with so much in politics (which is what the science-fraud problem ultimately boils down to), it’s the old Lenin question: “Who, whom?”
WHO gets to decide WHAT is fraud, and WHOM to prosecute?

Most of the workable solutions, from Glenn and the comments, revolve around changing the publish-or-perish incentives from “novel” to “useful”; require data bases to be “escrowed” with publishing institutions or somewhere other than the authors; increase requirements for replicability by unaffiliated parties BEFORE initiating any government policies or making additional scientific grants; and reserve a hefty percent of any grant money for said validations.

this is how JAMA and the Lancet, proferred ridiculous hypothesis, but because of their status, they were granted legitimacy, I’m referring to the most recent medical controversy,

Matt Taibbi: “So let me pause to say something about America’s current intellectual class from which the anti-disinformation complex works. By the way, there are no working class censors. The dirty secret of content moderation all over the world is that it’s a tiny sliver of educated rich correcting everybody else. It’s telling people what fork to use, but you can get a degree in it, basically.

The problem is America has the most useless aristocrats in history.

Even the French dandies who were marched to the razor by the Jacobins were towering specimens of humanity compared to the Michael Hadens, John Brennan’s, James Clapper’s, Mike McFall’s, and Rick Stengel’s who make up America’s self-appointed speech police. In pre-revolutionary France, even the most drunken, depraved, debauched libertine had to be prepared to back up an insolent act with a sword fight to the death.

Our aristocrats pee themselves at a mean tweet.

These people have no honor, no belief, no poetry, no art, no humor, no patriotism, which is unique to them, no loyalty, no dreams, and no accomplishments.

They are simultaneously illiterate and pretentious, which is very hard to pull off.

They may have one idea, and it’s not even an idea, but a sensation. Fear. Rightly so, because they snitch each other out at the drop of a hat. They’re afraid of each other. But they’re also terrified of everyone outside their social set, and they live in near constant dread of being caught with even one original opinion.”