Journalists who fuelled the 'fake news' McCarthyist fire will eventually see it burn down their own places of work.

Russian broadcasters RT and Sputnik are being pushed from Google News. The fact that Google brazenly admit that they are effectively acting as an arm of the US intelligence agencies and are deciding what we can and cannot watch due to political reasons is a disturbing reflection of the grim, Orwellian reality we are living in.

Worst of all, in my opinion, is the stifling of alternative media sites - most of them are anti-war and challenge authority in a non-partisan way; something you don't see often in the mainstream media nowadays.

% change of search engine traffic since Google 'fake news' algorithm started operating.

Without the Intercept we wouldn't have the Snowden Files, which documented the sick and unconstitutional ways in which the US spy on their own people. Now, the company is in real trouble.

Net Neutrality

Making the situation even worse, on Tuesday the FCC declared that it is putting an end to Net Neutrality.

According to Reuters:

The head of the U.S. Federal Communications Commission unveiled plans on Tuesday to scrap landmark 2015 rules intended to ensure a free and open internet, moving to give broadband service providers sweeping power over what content consumers can access.

FCC Chairman Ajit Pai, a Republican appointed by President Donald Trump in January, said the regulatory agency will vote at a Dec. 14 meeting on his plan to rescind the so-called net neutrality rules championed by Democratic former President Barack Obama that treated internet service providers like public utilities.

Pai said the action would remove heavy-handed internet regulations. Critics said it would let internet service providers give preferential treatment to some sites and apps and allow them to favor their own digital content.

The Obama-era rules, aimed at giving consumers equal access to web content, barred broadband providers from blocking or slowing down access to content or charging consumers more for certain content.

The FCC action was a clear victory for big internet service providers such as AT&T Inc, Comcast Corp and Verizon Communications Inc, which favored a repeal.

Now more than ever governments and large corporations are succeeding in dictating which media we are allowed to consume, and by extension, which information we are allowed to share and which opinions we are allowed to have.

I, for one, am terrified.