social media censorship

PayPal Backs Down

leeduigonOctober 12, 2022

So they wanted to fine customers $2,500 a pop for “promoting misinformation”–or, in plain English, for being… wrong. By “wrong” we mean “PayPal doesn’t want to hear it.”

In just a day PayPal’s stock shares dropped 6%, a PayPal ex-president was slamming his former company for trying to stifle dissenting opinions, and PayPal scrambled to declare the controversial policy was just… “an error” (https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/paypal-says-it-never-intended-fine-users-misinformation-bloomberg-news-2022-10-10/). They didn’t mean it–come on back, everybody.

I would imagine just about everybody is wrong about something every day–probably several times a day. Should you be fined for it–by a private business, no less? Can you imagine the screaming, the wailing, the gnashing of teeth we would have heard… if you could be fined for criticizing Donald Trump? But who ever gets shut down for promoting Far Left Crazy?

How long does Big Tech mean to maintain an adversarial relationship with half (or more–way more) of its customer base? How is this good business? “Buy Bigbee’s Bread–Unless You’re One Of Those Democrat Skunks Out There!” How does Big Tech get away with it? But of course no one would ever be allowed to insult Democrats.

Let’s just see how long it takes for PayPal to try it again.

NY to ‘Require’ Social Media to Rat Out ‘Hateful Conduct’

leeduigonJune 7, 2022

One way to create a police state is to turn every man into a a policeman–and, at the same time, a policeman’s prey. Always be ready to turn in your neighbor; and watch out he doesn’t turn you in first.

As our ruling class labors to turn America into a communist hell-hole, the new governor of New York (the old one, you may remember, had to resign in disgrace) has announced that from now on, social media providers will be “required (they love that word!) to monitor and report hateful conduct on their platforms.”

Gee, Kathy–what’s “hateful conduct?”

“Shut up!” she explained.

But that is the crux of it. Who gets to decide who’s “hateful”? And while we’re at it, are we talking about some absurd pretense by government of getting rid of a natural human emotion that’s part of who we are? Do they think they can change that? Just by having people report each other?

I lived in a police state for a time–my grade school. It was horrible. The kids who were, um, “safety patrols” had absolute power to pick on any kid they pleased: and the “school officials” always backed them up. There was one teacher who thought it was outrageous, but they got rid of him.

Wait’ll you get penalized because some malicious little twerp “reported” you for something that you didn’t do.

Hey, welcome to Kathy Hochul’s New York.

Too Crazy to Wait for Tomorrow!

leeduigonMay 13, 2022

This nooze item is too crazy to hold off for tomorrow.

Last year Texas passed a law to prevent social media companies from banning users based on their viewpoints. A district judge blocked it. But this week a federal appeals court reinstated the law.

Now for the crazy part. If you can buy this argument… you belong in collidge!

The social media companies claimed it was their free speech to ban other people’s free speech (https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2022/05/federal-appeals-court-reinstates-texas-law-prohibiting-social-media-companies-banning-users-based-viewpoints/). Like, how can they have free speech if they couldn’t silence speech with which they disagreed? (“My free speech depends on me silencing yours!”)

They put it this way: the law was “banning them from exercising editorial discretion over their private platforms.”

When I was a newspaper editor, there were letters to the editor, and rafts of press releases, that we didn’t publish for a variety of reasons. 1) We simply didn’t have the space to publish everything. 2) Some were so poorly written that we couldn’t figure out precisely what they were trying to say. 3) We didn’t publish crazy-talk.

What we didn’t do was systematically ban everyone whose point of view we disagreed with.

Big Tech has made a habit of banning conservative comment. They have also ruled that any recitation of facts that they don’t want to hear is “misinformation.” They can’t claim, as an actual newspaper can say, that they don’t have the space. My newspaper, The Bayshore Independent, published letters and press releases representing many different points of view, some of which we, the editors, strongly disagreed with. We sometimes interviewed people, and tried to treat them fairly, whose positions we strongly opposed.

“Yeahbut, yeahbut! You ban liberals from your blog!”

But I’ve made my standards clear. I publish no comments from those who personally insult other readers, attack me personally, use profanity, or just waste everybody’s time with a lot of inanity.

Big Tech abuses its editorial discretion. If they didn’t, the Texas law would never have been passed.

My Newswithviews Column, July 15 (‘Are You An “Extremist”?’)

leeduigonJuly 15, 2021

Nope, no extremists here!

Some of you have received these Facebook “extremist” warnings. Honk if you think “extremist” means Antifa or BLM.

Not to Facebook, it doesn’t.

Are You an “Extremist”?

And note the continuing efforts by leftids worldwide to train people to rat each other out. Do you know someone “at risk of becoming an extremist?”

Well, yeah, it happens that I do! Her name is Nancy Pelosi and she’s really gone off the deep end, I think she might be crazy. Isn’t it about time you guys carted her off?

They are out to erase our liberties, and they don’t mean maybe.

Return of the Big Words!

leeduigonJune 19, 2021

See the shock! Hear the fear! Vicariously, of course.

How could I ever have been so pusillanimous even to think of dumbing down my blog–in a vain hope that if I stuck with a sixth-grade reading level, I’d get more readers. What? Did some perverse fragment of my psyche want to be thought of as a latitudinarian?

All right, all right, you’ve made your point. Now stop showing off.

The problem here is that Big Tech is subverting Christian bloggers. They’re afraid to just ban us all outright. The pushback just might be strong enough to push them into a tar pit. But if they play with the search engines and use algorithms that shove conservative thought down to the bottom of the lists, that’s just as good as banning us.

And they ain’t doin’ that to us because they don’t like big words.

So let that sixth-grade reading level be Tokyo, and multi-syllabic words Godzilla. I’ll use the words I want to use, I’ll enjoy and share the richness of the English language, and I’ll be horsewhipped if I do any different. [Cue in Godzilla music]

Way to go, Ifukube-San!

I’m On MeWe Now

leeduigonJune 11, 2021

Okay! Thanks to Weavingword, with a little boost from SlimJim, I am now on MeWe and I’ve just made my first post there. I have no idea where this is going to take me. I’m trying to rally Christian bloggers to fight the censors by reblogging or linking to each other’s posts, and I hope MeWe can be part of that.

What I should be seeing is referrals from MeWe. At least, that’s what I think I should be seeing. But it’s very easy for me to go wrong when dealing with computer stuff.

Soon I should be able to put all my blog posts on my MeWe page.

A big part of taking our country back has to be to break the Big Tech oligarchs’ stranglehold on social media.

And get those incredibly wasteful and harmful “colleges” and “universities” defunded!

My Newswithviews Column, June 10 (‘Christian Bloggers, Unite!’)

leeduigonJune 10, 2021

Big Tech is suppressing speech by Christian and conservative bloggers. What to do?

Unite! Come together in mutal support. See, I’ve already started it.

Christian Bloggers, Unite!

If they thought they’d get away with just banning us all outright, they would’ve done it by now. That hesitation points to an achilles heel somewhere. They may be huge, wealthy, and powerful; but they are not invulnerable.

We can do this together! And what are we waiting for?