Alan Jacobs on the not-quite-censorship Amazon can accomplish in an age of technocracy; thinking back to how neo-cons had no qualms about deplatforming people who objected to Gulf War 2 15 years ago

https://blog.ayjay.org/damnatio-memoriae/
https://blog.ayjay.org/free-speech-under-technocracy/
https://blog.ayjay.org/up-the-amazon/

Fredrik deBoer's "only the club remains" about media professionals reminds me of Ellul's observation in The Empire of Non-Sense that attending the right parties where you meet arts critics was more important than the art you made

Since his posts still generally self-destruct after a few days, I wanted to mention deBoer has a post revisiting what he has described as the sclerotic and self-congratulating insular coterie of media figures.  The following reminded me, as I'll get to after complete quotation, to some observations Jacques Ellul made decades ago about how artists were not as significant in terms of their actual works as the personas they created that were then vetted by critics; that what mattered was which people you met at which parties in the right cities.  But first ... Fredrik deBoer's post: