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How the Internet Archive Censors Free Speech about Drugs

by Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher





February 28, 2025



Websites like the Internet Archive take the concept of "Kafkaesque" to a whole new level. They use algorithms written by anonymous techies to flag Drug War protest and remove it from the public discourse. Then they feel no compunction to discuss the issue with the authors of the banished material.

Three days ago, I reviewed a NIDA article about MDMA "abuse" by pointing out that NIDA was a political organization because it refuses to consider both the upsides of drug use and the downsides of prohibition. The Archive algorithms told me they had detected "spam" in my review and would not allow it to be published.

Spam?

I invite the reader to take a look at the review I had written (below) and tell me how anyone could call it spam. The Archive's algorithms were obviously written with a goal of suppressing free speech on the subject of drugs1. This suspicion is not allayed by the fact that the Archive has been ghosting me ever since they blocked my review. When I wrote them a few months ago about a technical problem that I was having with donating to them, they responded so quickly that my head was spinning. When I object about their censorship of free speech, they go silent for days.

I can understand that the Archive might not want to render their site controversial by allowing free speech on the subject of drugs, but if that is the case, they should not be soliciting reviews of their stored content.

Instead of discussing the censorship with me, the Archive chose the cowardly option of hiding behind algorithms to remove drug-war opponents from the public discourse.

Bill Gates once mused that "The Internet is becoming the town square for the global village of tomorrow." I think rather it is becoming the self-congratulatory echo chamber for bad ideas.

Banned



The following is my Banned Review of the NIDA article on the Internet Archive entitled "Research Report Series 2017 MDMA (Ecstasy) Abuse"2.

The government study of drugs is HUGELY biased. Their researchers ignore all the benefits of drugs as well as all the downsides of prohibition. Their only job is to demonize drug use by holding it to a safety standard that we apply to no other activity on planet Earth: not to free climbing, not to drag-racing, and certainly not to gun shooting or drinking alcohol. Speaking of alcohol, it kills 178,000 a year according to the CDC3, and yet the government invites us to fear drugs like Ecstasy, which have killed no one. The only deaths related to Ecstasy are those caused by the Drug War, which refuses to educate about safe use and to regulate product.

Ecstasy brought UNPRECEDENTED peace, love and understanding to the dance floors of Britain in the 1990s, but Drug Warriors do not like peace, love and understanding. And so Drug Warriors cracked down on the use of Ecstasy, after which violence SKYROCKETED at rave concerts as dancers switched to the anger-facilitating drug called alcohol, and concert organizers had to bring in special forces troops to keep the peace. Special forces4!

NIDA is just a propaganda arm of the U.S. government -- and will remain so until it recognizes the glaringly obvious benefits of drugs -- as well as the glaringly obvious downsides of prohibition, thanks to which America's inner cities have been turned into shooting galleries and the rule of law is now a joke in much of Latin America. 60,000 Mexicans have been "disappeared" thanks to the Drug War over the last 20 years5, and yet NIDA wants to outlaw a drug whose only crime is that it brought about unprecedented peace, love and understanding.

We don't need a National Institute on Drug Abuse. We need a National Institute on Drug USE -- an agency that recognizes the benefits of drugs and the downsides of prohibition.


It may be objected that I am expecting a lot from a presumably large organization such as the Internet Archive when I demand that it respond quickly to my complaints. The censorship of my article only happened a few days ago after all. But these are no ordinary complaints. These are complaints about my basic freedoms as an American citizen, viz my right to take part in public dialogue about issues vital to the republic. Nor did the Archive take long in ejecting me from the public forum. That was the eerie part. They did so instantaneously based on the implicit suspicions of a totally anonymous techie -- one who, like all Americans, was raised since childhood in the drug-hating ideology of the Drug War and grew up in a world in which the media never published any positive accounts of drug use. This was a world in which he was never told of the opium 6 use of Benjamin Franklin, nor of the DEA raid on Monticello 7 to confiscate the poppy plants of Benjamin's "dealer," Thomas Jefferson8, nor of the fact that psychedelic medicine inspired the very creation of the Hindu religion, nor that coca inspired the indigenous people of Peru.

And yet this anonymous techie, who is probably less than half my age, is going to decide on his own that my ideas are "beyond the pale" when it comes to drugs? To the contrary, the modern western idea of drugs is beyond the pale. This deadly hysterical approach that the west has adopted took shape beginning just over 100 years ago, whereas humankind has lived for tens of thousands of years without the wholesale demonization and criminalization of naturally occurring medicines. If anyone is beyond the pale it is the NIDA scientist who pretends that this unprecedented prohibition is a natural baseline for drug-related research, that drugs can fairly be seen to have no positive benefits. If anyone is beyond the pale it is the NIDA scientist who sees no downsides in drug prohibition, despite the fact that it has created violence and torture out of whole cloth and destroyed American liberties -- including free speech. How ironic when you consider that folks like Gates and Kurzweil saw such a rosy online world in which new ideas could thrive and grow. Instead, the Internet as made censorship efficient and given publishers a way to block unwelcome ideas and social criticism through the craven use of algorithms written by anonymous cowards.



Author's Follow-up: February 28, 2025

picture of clock metaphorically suggesting a follow-up


The Archive got back to me and, as expected, they said that the article had to cover specifics. But my whole point was that NIDA is not qualified to opine authoritatively on such topics as MDMA.

If Archive had posted an article by the NAZI party, would I not be allowed to point out why we should not be listening to such a source and rather explain why they are evil? I dismissed NIDA 9 on the grounds that they are evil insofar as their attitude toward drugs is anti-scientific, ignoring as it does both obvious drug benefits and obvious prohibition downsides, and that this anti-science has evil consequences in the real world.




Notes:

1: Speak now or forever hold your peace about drug prohibition (up)
2: Research Report Series 2017 MDMA (Ecstasy) Abuse (up)
3: Deaths from Excessive Alcohol Use in the United States (up)
4: How the Drug War killed Leah Betts (up)
5: BBC (up)
6: The Truth About Opium by William H. Brereton (up)
7: The Dark Side of the Monticello Foundation (up)
8: How the DEA Scrubbed Thomas Jefferson's Monticello Poppy Garden from Public Memory (up)
9: How The NIDA Blocks Marijuana Research Over and Over (up)


Internet Archive Censorship




The Internet Archive runs censorship algorithms on autopilot. They flagged my criticism of a NIDA article as 'spam.' They could not even tell me why the algorithm called it spam, but they refused to overrule the algorithm. They apparently fail to realize that algorithms are written by real people based on real assumptions -- and that an algorithm is clearly wrong when it trashes legitimate opinion as 'spam.' Here is the letter that I wrote to the staff to complain of their censorship. I sent this letter to at least 20 separate staffers, to give it at least some chance of being attended to -- for experience shows that the vast majority of people at such organizations will ghost you should you bring up a drug-related topic.

I paste the letter below now without further comment....



Amir Esfahani et al. 3-30-25
c/o The Internet Archive
300 Funston Ave
San Francisco, CA 94118

Dear Mr. Esfahani:

I am writing to protest the Internet Archive's use of algorithms to censor free speech about drugs.

I recently wrote a review of a NIDA article on Internet Archive entitled "Research Report Series 2017 MDMA (Ecstasy) Abuse." In my review, I pointed out the biases of NIDA and how they ignore all glaringly obvious benefits of psychoactive substances. The review was blocked by your algorithms as "spam."
Spam? I am used to being banned and blocked for speaking the truth about drug policy, but how exactly do my comments (see below) qualify as spam? Perhaps you could ask the programmer who wrote the algorithms and get back to me?

When I protested to IA, I received no response until I threatened a lawsuit -- even though I had received same-day service when my questions concerned donating to your site. An anonymous member of your "Internet Archive Team" finally got back to me by email and told me that they themselves were uncertain why my review was blocked. This alone should have been grounds for permitting my review to be published! Instead, they seemed to think that the algorithm that blocked me was infallible and should not be second guessed. In fact, they said that IA made a point of not intervening personally in censorship decisions and relied totally on their algorithms.

WHAT? Do you not realize that algorithms are written by actual people based on actual assumptions? Your censorship algorithms should not be on autopilot. You should be tracking down the algorithm maker and asking them why they are flagging free speech about drugs as "spam."

The team member speculated that my review might have lacked specifics about the article in question, but that is a sham excuse for censoring me. There are plenty of reviews on IA that do not mention specifics but rather praise the authors. Why then am I blocked for suggesting that the authors of an IA article are biased on the subject about which they write?

It is "chilling" to have one's review blocked in real-time by a faceless algorithm. When you take such a drastic step, you have a responsibility to make the reason as clear as possible to the would-be posters and not to simply flag their comments with a mendacious catch-all term such as "spam." If you want some pointers for how to use censorship algorithms fairly, consistently, and in a user-friendly way, just ask and I will provide you with some common-sense suggestions.

Meanwhile, I ask you to please publish my review and to stop suppressing it for algorithmic reasons that you yourselves admit you do not understand.

Yours Truly...................

The following is my Banned Review of the NIDA article on the Internet Archive entitled "Research Report Series 2017 MDMA (Ecstasy) Abuse."

The government study of drugs is HUGELY biased. Their researchers ignore all the benefits of drugs as well as all the downsides of prohibition. Their only job is to demonize drug use by holding it to a safety standard that we apply to no other activity on planet Earth: not to free climbing, not to drag-racing, and certainly not to gun shooting or drinking alcohol. Speaking of alcohol, it kills 178,000 a year according to the CDC, and yet the government invites us to fear drugs like Ecstasy, which have killed no one. The only deaths related to Ecstasy are those caused by the Drug War, which refuses to educate about safe use and to regulate product.

Ecstasy brought UNPRECEDENTED peace, love and understanding to the dance floors of Britain in the 1990s, but Drug Warriors do not like peace, love and understanding. And so Drug Warriors cracked down on the use of Ecstasy, after which violence SKYROCKETED at rave concerts as dancers switched to the anger-facilitating drug called alcohol, and concert organizers had to bring in special forces troops to keep the peace. Special forces!

NIDA is just a propaganda arm of the U.S. government -- and will remain so until it recognizes the glaringly obvious benefits of drugs -- as well as the glaringly obvious downsides of prohibition, thanks to which America's inner cities have been turned into shooting galleries and the rule of law is now a joke in much of Latin America. 60,000 Mexicans have been "disappeared" thanks to the Drug War over the last 20 years, and yet NIDA wants to outlaw a drug whose only crime is that it brought about unprecedented peace, love and understanding.

We don't need a National Institute on Drug Abuse. We need a National Institute on Drug USE -- an agency that recognizes the benefits of drugs and the downsides of prohibition.


  • Demonizing Human Transcendence
  • Even Howard Zinn Reckons without the Drug War
  • How the Archive.org Website Censors Free Speech About Drugs
  • How the Internet Archive Censors Free Speech about Drugs
  • Self-Censorship in the Age of the Drug War
  • When Drug Warriors cry 'Censorship!'
  • How the Archive.org Website Censors Free Speech About Drugs
  • How the Internet Archive Censors Free Speech about Drugs
  • THE ANTI DRUG WAR BLOG





    • Ten Tweets

    against the hateful war on US




    Mad in America publishes stories of folks who are disillusioned with antidepressants, but they won't publish mine, because I find mushrooms useful. They only want stories about cold turkey and jogging, or nutrition, or meditation.

    The Drug Warriors say: "Don't tread on me! (That said, please continue to tell me what plants I can use, how much pain relief I can get, and whether my religion is true or not.)"

    If America cannot exist without outlawing drugs, then there is something wrong with America, not with drugs.

    "Dope Sick"? "Prohibition Sick" is more like it. The very term "dope" connotes imperialism, racism and xenophobia, given that all tribal cultures have used "drugs" for various purposes. "Dope? Junk?" It's hard to imagine a more intolerant, dismissive and judgmental terminology.

    Saying "Fentanyl kills" is philosophically equivalent to saying "Fire bad!" Both statements are attempts to make us fear dangerous substances rather than to learn how to use them as safely as possible for human benefit.

    We need a scheduling system for psychoactive drugs as much as we need a scheduling system for sports activities: i.e. NOT AT ALL. Some sports are VERY dangerous, but we do not outlaw them because we know that there are benefits both to sports and to freedom in general.

    The prohibitionist motto is: "Billions for arrest, not one cent for education."

    Billboards reading "Fentanyl kills" are horrible because they encourage the creation of racist legislation that outlaws all godsend uses of opiates. Kids in hospice in India go without morphine because of America's superstitious fear of opiates.

    Had the FDA been around in the Indus Valley 3,500 years ago, there would be no Hindu religion today, because they would have found some potential problem with the use of soma.

    Besides, why should I listen to the views of a microbe?


    Click here to see All Tweets against the hateful War on Us






    Charles Fort Didn't Know from Damnation
    How the Archive.org Website Censors Free Speech About Drugs


    Copyright 2025 abolishthedea.com, Brian Quass

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