Posted on 05/04/2018 5:05:23 PM PDT by OddLane
I haven't done a vanity in a while, and I intend on fleshing out my thoughts in a long form essay/piece for another website in the near future, but I figured I would give a personal perspective to the broader issue of online censorship by website owners that bill themselves as content neutral providers.
I know that some, especially those who have no qualms about suppressing contrary points of view will object to the use of the phrase "censorship," since social media platforms like Twitter are not controlled by the government, therefore have a right to restrict and expunge any political perspectives with which they disagree.
However, since there's not a more precise term for the suppression of "hate speech" by private, non-governmental bodies, that is the word I will use, and it fits. I was permanently banned from Twitter, even thought they did not use the term ban-and they did not delete my account-for arousing the ire of blue checkmarks.
Because I had not violated the TOS, they could not technically "ban" me, so they decided to label my behavior that of an automated account, i.e. a bot. So remember, the next time you hear of Twitter purging thousands of dastardly Russian "bots," chances are that many of them are not Russian, and not bots, but simply people who want to impede Twitter's transition into an insipid online hug box resembling Tumblr.
Social media, in all of it’s forms, is the enemy.
They are the enemy. Say it out loud, because it’s true.
Well, they certainly don’t seem to be friends.
LOL @ these keywords.
gab.ai
It’s hard for me to imagine someone looking back at the rise of social media in 2050 and deciding it was really this great thing for society.
Freegards
I tried Gab for a few months. I know some people who use it, but for me it was an unusable mess.
Now Twitter and Facebook and Youtube are purging anything that does not fit the Leftist narrative. It is their only hope to regain control of the information pipeline.
Joseph Goebbels would nod knowingly at their efforts.
They never expected Trump, or Brexit, to win.
The fact that they did ensured that they would never allow that to happen again.
Fortunately, like Hillary, they're always fighting the last war.
They don't have the innovation to think ahead, ironically enough.
A comedian I heard once put it into perspective. By recalling how we used to handle uninvited guests at our house.
Back in the 80s we were EXCITED about people just dropping by. We hear a car door shut and excitedly run to the window.. “Look! It’s Jerry and he brought the family!”
Now when we hear a car door shut in our driveway we extinguish the lights, grab a gun and start asking everyone in the house if they invited anyone over - both afraid and angrily.
People predicted this, and they were truly prophets. The online thing is replacing the face-to-face thing. People don’t visit anymore. I’ve been off social media for 2 years now and no one NO ONE visits or calls. It never happens. People don’t even text. My friends and wife tell me that everyone is having an adventure but not a single person remembers I exist.
So you’ve been a Russian computer program all along? That doesn’t explain anything!
Robert Tracinski did a great thread exploring precisely this problem.
Twitter is not your friend and is a pox on society........leave it alone and get on with your life.
Candidate Trump and his staff used them like a boss to eviscerate The Clinton Campaign/MSM
In the very broad scheme of things, it's unimportant, and the overall impact on society is undoubtedly negative.
However, this is how humans communicate now.
It's how elections are decided.
What's more, if it were completely useless, there would be no point in these websites deplatforming us.
No one tries to suppress the speech of LaRouchies or those lunatics in the Revolutionary Communist Party, because everyone realizes their words and actions have absolutely no impact-they don't move the needle.
OTOH, someone like me-with less than 2K followers, and who interacted with maybe a thousand others-was shadow banned for over a month, blocked by numerous friends of Jack Dorsey and blue tick journos, and eventually expelled from the site altogether under false pretenses.
Ha, I am actually glad it passed me right on by. I can see it being really addictive.
We didn’t develop with the ability to know what our friends, neighbors and family or even some dude in China think about everything at any time. I think it changes the way people think. In my opinion the jury is still out on if we have the capacity to handle this stuff.
I recently found a Rolling Stone anniversary issue from the 80s with an interview from Tim Leary. He was talking about how we had become a screen culture, that we look at screens more than we look at the faces of loved ones, family and friends. He said that we would soon have personal screens that we could carry around and watch our own personal programming. Of course it probably sounded nutty back then, especially coming from him.
Freegards
He wrote about the World Wide Web in its most incipient stages, and the use of computer technology to augment education curriculum in Amusing Ourselves to Death.
Ha, I was a actually going to look for that book today at the library but it was closed. It’s on the list.
Freegards
His comparison of post-literate cultures to a civilization that was formed in the crucible of the printed word, which is basically the thesis of the book, is fascinating, and I think helpful in understanding the Internet Age, even if it doesn't deal directly with the Internet.
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