After October 7th, every American media company came under wartime censorship. Censorship usually refers to state action, but America is ruled by corporations, so it's a moot point. The Board of every US media company has a Zionist member on it, and the place I made most of my money—Medium—was no exception.

Benjamin Horowitz is on the Medium Corporation board and Andreessen Horowitz has major investments in 'Israel'. Along with with every media company in the greater White Empire, they have aggressively deplatformed the great rebellion of Palestine. Poets like Refaat Alareer have been demonized and assassinated and plodders like me have been merely demonetized. See for yourself:

Demonetization

Medium was the hand that fed me, and I mean no malice as I bite it. But, you know, CHOMP CHOMP. So long, and thanks for all the fish. I always thought it was odd that an American company paid me and I don't find it unodd if they don't feel like it.

All I can say is that before October 7th I was earning circa $1500 a month from Medium and after I was earning $300, if I was lucky. Despite having 40,000+ followers (a joke metric in this algorithmic age) my posts were shown to 300 (shout-out Sari). And I was never distributed again (Medium's human curation). The fact is that my theory didn't change. The Palestinian praxis did. I discovered the edges of the 'Overton Window' through defenestration. You can talk about rebellion all you want. But doing it is forbidden.

The fading Noam Chomsky once said (via), “The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum — even encourage the more critical and dissident views. That gives people the sense that there’s free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate.”

Within the American 'Overton Window' you can talk and criticize a lot this is, indeed, proof of the American concept. But talking about certain people is 'supporting terrorism'. When I support Hamas and Hezbollah and Ansarallah, that's verboten. If I support Iran that's forbidden. There are state enemies and you're not supposed to state their names, except in copy-paste condemnation, like bombing people to free hairstyles. Every liberal platform is ultimately just the liberal version of Der Stürmer. They follow the Iron Law of Liberalism: oppose every war (but the current war) and support every civil rights movement (but the current one). This is the 'Overton Window' of White Empire, as I have discovered it during the great defenestration following October 7th.

One of the tricks of liberal wartime propaganda is the strict delineation of violent and non-violent action, and the literal denigration of the former. Of course, no one is asking the US government to be non-violent. You can support bombing many countries, as long as they're state enemies. No, what they're really talking about is maintaining the imperial monopoly of violence. Any violence against Empire is bad, but violence against Empire's enemies is just another day in the Cable-TV Colosseum.

Americans talk about bombing other countries over drinks, this is casual conversation in that country. But if someone bombs them, that's terrorism. This frame actually worked for decades after 9/11, but those decades are over. Brown people have phones, satellite TV channels, and—most importantly—RPGs. Shit is real in the field, and wartime propaganda and censorship can only hide so much of it. America is trying to conduct a genocide in the social media age, after they have lost control of social media. It's too much, too late.

Remonetization

People don't actually want to consume propaganda, especially if they've figured out that it's propaganda. While I, personally, enjoy propaganda posters and the occasional Nazi film, propaganda writing is uniformly atrocious. Reading propaganda news is just boring, they keep repeating the same story over and over again, regardless of what happens. This sort of media just makes you stupider, and it's obvious in the written medium. So, in this case, the algorithmic censorship is going against the grain of the global population. It's starting to discredit the whole operation.

I cottoned on to this years ago through bitter experience, but more people are picking that cotton every day now. Today, I personally consume exactly zero mainstream news, either local or foreign and consider myself better informed because of this. I stopped reading the local papers after they tried to cover up our uncle's murder. I stopped reading the foreign papers after they tried to cover up multiple mass murders. Quitting mass media is like quitting McDonald's. You are what you read just as you are what you eat. That shit is just bad for you.

The mainstream, however, is where the most fish are. In one month on Medium I was able to earn $6,281, a princely sum in Sri Lanka. This was of course after paying the US Government their 10% as withholding tax lol. On average, I was earning like $1,500, which is still balling on a budget down in the Dirty South. I have never trusted platforms since Facebook pivoted to video (never forget) and I set up my own email list I think two years ago. I didn't want to put all my eggs in one medium basked, but my own website was earning maybe $400 a month in October, and growing slowly. When I got demonetized, however, I was glad I'd dug that tunnel. Suddenly www.indi.ca became my highest income source, because Medium tried to bury me. But as the poet said, 'they didn't know we were seeds' and that blog has slowly born fruit. At least enough to buy my son guavas.

For my humble expectations, an $800 run rate (I also have some subs on Ko-Fi) is good, and it's actually more than that. Most of my subscriptions are annual (people paying $50 or $100 a month, holla). The MRR rate averages that over 12 months, but I get all that cash up front. Thus actual cashflow was $1,400 in May (with vestigial $300 from Medium). This is good enough. I can let some more dust settle on my CV and become even more unemployable.

Note that I'm not trying to maximize views, I'm trying to tell the truth. This is of course impossible because truth isn't true, but that's what I'm trying to do. I don't even have stats on the website, I have no idea how many people read it, beyond subscribers. My only 'business' goal is to never get a job again, and as long as I make around $1,500 a month I don't have to. And, mashallah, I'm up to that level.

Remonstration

This just my personal story of demonetization and remonetization. This is probably the most mild experience of imperial wartime censorship you could experience. The wartime censorship regime is harsh and many people have lost their entire livelihoods. People within the slave state of America thus lose their healthcare and physical security also, it's real in the field. Wherever the Empire had power, Palestinian posts were disappeared and demonetized and people were fired, beaten, and arrested for speech (including assembly). It's ironic that algorithm is an Arabic word, because algorithms were used to crush the 'Arabic' word as much as possible. Of course it's not just Arabic-speaking people that are speaking out. You don't need auto-translate to have human feelings.

This is not the real business end of White Empire. There is nothing to complain about here, I merely comment. People have lost their homes, their children, their access to food and water, their ability to grieve; they have lost more than any human can bear and then had more heaped upon them. This is the spitefulness of a dying empire. They're going down the way they came in, genocidal and ugly.

So I'll close this disclosure with a disclosure of where much of this money has been going. I visit (and follow) Gaza Funds, and donate whenever I feel like crying, which is all the time. I don't even think about it, I just pick random fundraisers. And I encourage you to do so also, as much as possible. As Allah says,

Whatever you have been given is only a temporary provision of this life, but that which is with God is better and more lasting for those who believe and put their trust in their Lord; who refrain from heinous sins and gross indecencies; who forgive when they are angry; who respond to their Lord and attend to their prayers; who conduct their affairs by mutual consultation and spend out of what We have provided for them; who, when they are attacked, defend themselves.

Let harm be requited by an equal harm. But whoever pardons and amends will find his reward with God. He does not love the wrongdoers.

Those who defend themselves after they have been wronged cannot be held blameworthy, blame falls only on those who wrong men and transgress on this earth without justification—such will have a painful punishment—whoever is patient and forgiving, acts with great courage and resolution.

I'd say this sums up the situation of which my case is just an insignificant illustration. We are witnessing the liberation of a nation, the decimation of a population, the fall of an empire, and a mass media that's devolved into pure hallucination. Allah be with those who need it the most, at this time of tribulation. And CHOMP CHOMP to the hand that fed us, while holding a whip in the other.