The New Normal "Reality" Police

So, according to Facebook and the Atlantic Council, I am now a "dangerous individual," you know, like a "terrorist," or a "serial murderer," or "human trafficker," or some other kind of "criminal." Or I've been praising "dangerous individuals," or disseminating their symbols, or otherwise attempting to "sow dissension" and cause "offline harm."

Actually, I'm not really clear what I'm guilty of, but I'm definitely some sort of horrible person you want absolutely nothing to do with, whose columns you do not want to read, whose books you do not want to purchase, and the sharing of whose Facebook posts might get your account immediately suspended. Or, at the very least, you'll be issued this warning:

Now, hold on, don't click away just yet. You're already on whatever website you're reading this "dangerous," "terrorist" column on (or you're reading it in an email, probably on your phone), which means you are already on the official "Readers of Mass-Murdering Content" watch-list. So you might as well take the whole ride at this point.

Also, don't worry, I'm not going to just whine about how Facebook was mean to me for 2,000 words … well, all right, I'm going to do that a little, but mostly I wanted to demonstrate how "reality" is manufactured and policed by global corporations like Facebook, Twitter, Google, the corporate media, of course, crowdfunding platforms like Patreon and PayPal, and "think tanks" like the Atlantic Council and its Digital Forensic Research Lab ("DFRLab").