How Knowledge Becomes Power
“Language contains our knowledge and at the same time fails to contain it. All it really contains is our performance of control."
— Anton Hur, Toward Eternity
One straightforward answer to the question, “What even is a website today?" is that a website is a digital interface for content in various forms. It's a system for displaying and distributing knowledge. In this way, not much has changed about websites since the dawn of the internet. Our tools for building those systems and structuring that knowledge have proliferated, but the purpose has remained the same.
There's a reason that Google's early mission was “to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful." The internet represents an incredible acceleration of the democratization of knowledge, a process also marked by the inventions of writing, the printing press, and the telegraph. Websites have allowed us to share not only empirical and rational knowledge but also experiential, cultural, indigenous, and artistic knowledge. Even if it's sometimes hard to believe, we know more about each other and our diverse experiences of the world than at any other time in human history.
And for some, that's a problem. Because knowledge is (at least in part) power. Whoever gets to curate and distribute knowledge has the power to shape how we see each other and the world.
If you're a regular reader of this newsletter, what I choose to think and write about influences—in one way or another—how you perceive other ideas you come in contact with. How I set up this website and what aspects of my body of work I choose to surface shape how you interact with the knowledge contained within. That's quite a responsibility—and one I take seriously.
The Pop-Up
When Congress passed the bipartisan ‘TikTok ban,' one of the body's stated concerns was the potential for the Chinese government to manipulate the content the app showed users. Later, in front of the Supreme Court, rockstar solicitor general Elizabeth Prelogar repeated this concern on the government's behalf—albeit with less conviction than the national security concerns that also justified the ban in Washington's view.
But it wasn't until TikTok went dark for about 18 hours as the ban took effect that there was an undeniable manipulation of the content users saw. The first instance was the message users received when they pulled up the app during its time offline:
Sorry, TikTok isn’t available right now
A law banning TikTok has been enacted in the U.S. Unfortunately, that means you can’t use TikTok for now.
We are fortunate that President Trump has indicated that he will work with us on a solution to reinstate TikTok once he takes office. Please stay tuned!
The legislation does not require TikTok to make its services unavailable. Instead, it prohibits US app stores from distributing or providing updates for the app and US-based web hosts from rendering their services. In the end, the effect would be the same—TikTok would become unusable—but the technical difference is key to understanding how this was an instance of content manipulation.
The next day, when I noticed the news that TikTok would be coming back online, my daughter opened the app on her phone. Now, there was a new pop-up. It read:
Welcome back! Thanks for your patience and support. As a result of President Trump's efforts, TikTok is back in the U.S.!
I rolled my eyes at the pop-up—as did my daughter. But I started yelling and wildly gesticulating when her first video popped up. It was a TikToker dancing around also thanking the not-yet president for saving TikTok. Gross.
By taking the service offline, TikTok created an opportunity to praise the man who was not yet president. TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew or someone on his team spotted a chance to perform an unprecedented act of flattery. He who controls the pop-ups has the power.
He who controls the pop-ups has the power.
That message, seen by millions of Americans, shaped the experience of getting back on their beloved app. The message influenced those users as knowers. A pop-up message is a potent medium of communication, and its content delivers knowledge in a disruptive and authoritative way.
This is old news now. The TikTok ban and inauguration day feel like a decade ago even though nary a month has passed.
The Purge
Today's news is more about other forms of content manipulation. On the one hand, there's the systematic if imprecise purging of government web pages that include terms like “pronouns," “bias," or “inclusion." On the other hand, there's the defunding of scientific research and the denial of access to critical databases of worldwide import. Of course, there is also the reckless handling of our most private data—not only putting it at risk of destruction but making it an easy target for nefarious actors.
This is on top of the ongoing and escalating attack on higher education. From questioning the economic value of the humanities, to raging against critical race theory, gender studies, and Marxist philosophy, to ending affirmative action programs, to now unceremoniously denying government funding to researchers who produce knowledge products and discoveries that benefit everyone, MAGA and its adjacent “movements" are fighting for ignorance. Beginning in the ‘80s, a college education was gradually transformed into a career training scheme and investment product. The college degree no longer symbolized an advanced education but instead, a certification for a particular category of work.
Of course, content manipulation is nothing new.
When a council of Christian bishops affirmed what scripture was regarded as canon and what was apocryphal in 393 CE, they chose what spiritual content counted and what didn't for the Catholic church. When the US government forcibly removed Native children from their homes and put them in boarding schools, they chose what cultural content counted and what didn't. When radio stations took payments from record companies to play certain songs, they chose what musical content counted and what didn't.
We do it, too. All the time, in smaller ways. When I made decisions about what content to move from my various websites into this consolidated one, I chose what of my own content I wanted to make accessible (or not).
On one level or another, how we create, curate, and make content accessible speaks volumes about what we value. And what we value then filters the knowledge we can access and the ways of knowing we can utilize. For this reason, knowledge creation, curation, and accessibility are powerful tools—or, perhaps more accurately, tools of power. When those with power declare some forms of knowledge unsuitable, worthless, unserious, or even offensive, they declare their superiority to those who value them.
Frantz Fanon, a French Afro-Caribbean psychiatrist and philosopher, wrote that “colonialism is a psychic and epistemological process as much as a material one." In other words, subjugators can create financial, economic, and physical hardship to oppress—but they also oppress the mind. Peruvian sociologist Anibál Quijano, building on Fanon's work, describes the “coloniality of knowledge" as a process of superseding or erasing the knowledge and ways of knowing of colonized peoples. This destabilizes communities and disrupts the social connections that could be vectors for resistance. Epistemic violence can be just as destructive as physical violence and perhaps even more profound and long-lasting.
“Colonialism is a psychic and epistemological process as much as a material one."
— Frantz Fanon
The Trump administration is erasing the language of feminism, diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility from government websites because that language represents a body of knowledge that threatens the hegemony of white male supremacist knowing. They demand people use and “appreciate" their sex assigned at birth because the lived experience of gender is a form of knowledge that undermines their authority. They insist on “patriotic education" in public schools because learning history is messy and requires a student to engage in ways of knowledge (and learning) that, over time, can threaten the status quo. They defund research, attack universities, and callously ignore the student loan crisis because our higher education system is defined by the expansion of knowledge.
The political situation in the US (and in many countries worldwide) may seem to have little to do with your daily work. It also may feel all too salient. However, epistemic violence impacts all of us—right down to our bank accounts.
In a particularly close-to-home example, YellowHouse.Media lost an in-progress production project to the National Science Foundation funding freeze. The NSF was funding a project that was funding our client, who was funding us—in a manner of speaking. I'd like to say that this is quite an anomaly for us—and in some ways, it is. But most of our clients leverage ways of knowing and forms of knowledge currently under direct attack.
I don't want to portray our little business as a victim here. My point is that when knowledge comes under attack, when content is manipulated to privilege some and undermine others, when seemingly inconsequential decisions are weaponized, we all suffer.
The Plan
With that in mind, we can fortify the ways of knowing we value and the knowledge they create. We can learn something from the Indigenous archivists and cultural stewards who work to restore ways of knowing and maintain knowledge. We can tell our stories, share the wisdom we gain, and document the diverse forms of knowledge we all possess.
One small way we do that today is through websites. A website is a kind of archive. The content we create and the knowledge we share on websites are forms of preservation if we allow them to be. We've already seen how quickly platform executives betray us, so we can't rely on platforms as archives of knowledge, culture, or even social connection.
But we can build websites and fill them with our knowledge.
