If I didn’t have supreme confidence in my own unimportance, I’d swear WordPress was out to get me.
Yesterday it was the ol’ “Make his connection to Facebook go away” trick; and try as I might, I couldn’t get it back. Now you see it, now you don’t. I called up Jill and she couldn’t get it back, either. “Have you posted anything they might want to censor?” she asked. Not to my knowledge. Besides, by then we had a video of babies and puppies, and who would censor that? (Is that one of those questions that you shouldn’t ask?)
Well, we tried this and we tried that. And suddenly the post that didn’t have a Facebook share button had one; but the post that had one a moment ago now didn’t. “It looks like some kind of glitch at their end,” Jill theorized. “It might be gone by tomorrow.”
Voila, it’s gone. Of course, I haven’t tried to post this yet, so who knows what will happen? I’m starting to feel like those hamsters on the wheel up there.
As I was finishing my last post (the one before this one), my work mysteriously disappeared from the page. Now what? What “improvement” are they hitting me with now? But then I began to wonder: had I been censored? The post included some teensy-weensy criticism of the otherwise perfect and beloved Black Lives Matter–and I’ve seen reports of some of the social media platforms banning any such comments. But I tracked down my post and posted it, so I guess I’m not banned. Not yet.
Now, how hard is it to visualize a near future in which anyone who doesn’t have a Black Lives Matter lawn sign is going to be in for lively times? Broken windows, slashed tires, scary phone calls… the usual bag of tricks.
In many venues now, we are not permitted to criticize what is, to be truthful about it, an evil revolutionary gang aspiring to destroy our country and make racial hatred the basis of our social life. Question: Is forcing us into silence going to endear them to us? If we can be made to say we like them and support them, will that eventually become our reality? Or will it just make us as mad as hell?
And now I have to stop because some more “improvements” have suddenly appeared on my screen and I have no idea what’s going to be published here. Let me know if you have problems reading it.
Our friend “Re-Farmer” sent us this video in a comment yesterday, and I’m posting it here today so everyone can see it.
When I have a post that I think will probably be suppressed by Facebook–experience is my guide–I often head it up with a picture of happy puppies. This always gets it past FB’s robot censors.
Well, watch how this guy totally defeats the YouTube censors. You may, at first, fall for his trick and think he’s just repeating the same-old same-old–but stay with it, you’ll soon be applauding his resourcefulness.
Yes, we can beat Far Left Crazy. It’ll take hard work and ingenuity, but we can do it!
Many of you here on this blog, including me, have been censored by the social media, and it’s always been a one-way street: censorship for us, a free pass for Far Left Crazy.
Section 230 of the act which exempts the social media from being held liable for any damages incurred because of the content that they post, the Communications Decency Act, does not allow the social media to make “editorial decisions” regarding users’ content. But in recent years, the president said, the social media have disregarded that regulation and become, he said, “nothing more than a political activism group.”
Attorney General William Barr is preparing legislation to put an end to social media censorship.
It’s about time.
Somehow it’s only conservative opinion that ends up getting banned as “hate speech,” only conservative websites that wind up getting shut down or temporarily silenced. We all wanted an Internet that was free of censorship, but we haven’t got it. If the proposed regulations get signed into law, Big Tech will have only itself to thank.
The social media have evolved into a resource used by everyone, but everyone doesn’t get the same treatment. We are not generally in favor of inventing new regulations, but the situation with the social media has gotten out of hand. I shouldn’t have to use a picture of happy puppies every time I want to discuss something deemed controversial. If I don’t, Facebook censors me.
The former Sandinista who’s now the mayor of New York said, not long ago, that if he had his druthers, “Government would determine your day-to-day reality.”
Sometimes, explains a Twitter executive, “when things get heated, you may say things you don’t mean.” Uh-huh. “We’re trying to encourage people to rethink their behavior.”
Who do these people think they are? Do they have any idea, any dim little ghost of an idea, what pompous self-important schmendricks they are? What little tinpot fascists they are? They’re gonna save us from ourselves, by cracky!
No! Go away! Out, damned spot!
We need saving from those pinheads who want to save us.
For the past two months there’s been essentially just one story in the nooze, night and day–the coronavirus. And we get bad news and alarming statistics 24/7.
Fear sells. Fear gets ratings.
Worse, the bulk of our nooze media has a political agenda: victory for Democrats, no matter what it costs the country.
Military history tells us that psychological warfare works. It demoralizes armies and saps the soldiers’ will to fight. It can do the same to civilians. Mr. Brown wonders if it is doing the same to us. Ya mean it isn’t?
We have endless repetition of bad news, scary stats, all day and all night. You can get people to believe almost anything if you repeat it often enough.
Where governors and mayors have indulged in what Mr. Brown and others call “police state tactics,” the media has cheered them on. This is America, and we’re supposed to debate public policy–not just ram it down the public’s throat.
And on top of all this, Big Tech has been censoring dissent in the social media. Critics’ voices are not heard.
Our country’s founders deemed a free press indispensable to the maintenance of our republic. They never envisioned that virtually the whole media would transform itself into a propaganda apparatus for one political party. They knew the press would sometimes lie, sometimes conceal the truth, sometimes get hysterical. But they never dreamed the press would do those things, on purpose, as the means of achieving a desired political objective.
We still need a free press. But more and more… we don’t have one.
Mayor William Kirby, Democrat (of course), has announced his resignation after his stumblebum Tweet whipped up a firestorm of public protest. He said the comment was “meant to be private”–uh, then why did you post it on the social media, chucklehead? and more than once, too–and “made out of frustration.”
Gee, now who woulda thought anyone would think it was “hateful” to equate support for our president with belonging to the KKK? By the way, that would give the Ku Klux Klan some 68 million members and transform it into a dominant force in American politics. But anyway, the same Facebook that so often censors you and me (I called a Democrat politician a doofus once, and they censored that) gave this moron mayor a total free pass when he equated mainstream American Trump voters with the KKK–a domestic terrorist organization that used to kill people but is now just about extinct. No hate here, buckaroos! Nothing to censor here!
Anyhow, so much for this clown’s career. He’s lucky he’s not a conservative: he’d be up in front of a “human rights” tribunal looking at a colossal fine for “hate speech” and maybe even a trip to jail.
The first lost soul to do it said she did it because she doesn’t want to “get old and ugly.” Keep licking toilet seats, sunshine, and you won’t have to worry about the “old” part. As for ugly–well, suicidal idiocy is not exactly beautiful.
Some might call it natural selection for extinction.
We keep telling you: you can’t just kill the culture, day in, day out, and expect nothing bad to happen. Our schools are killing it, our “entertainment” is killing it, and now it’s going to kill us back.
Uh, social media–you guys who censor Christians and conservatives–anybody home? Are you, like, gonna censor these videos, so that morons and idiots who think they can get famous by publicly doing really stupid things, won’t have this avenue of self-expression anymore?
Unexpected moral lesson: there are some selves that really shouldn’t be expressed.
By now I’ve learned that there are a lot of us, right here on this blog, who’ve been banned or suspended from the social media for one stupid “reason” or another. But I’ve never heard of anyone being banned or suspended for spouting Far Left Crazy we-hate-everybody twaddle.
And when you get around the media gatekeepers, there are always individual prats who want to shut you down. I heard from one the other day. Because I don’t reserve my vote for The Righteous Candidate who doesn’t exist and never will, she said, I’m just a phony evil fake Christian. Not a real one like Pete “I’ve Got a Husband!” Whatsisname, who ponces around with a Bible while praising abortion to the skies.
So you’re “dangerous” and I’m “dangerous,” and oh! I pray it’s so! I would love to be a genuine danger to the humanist lies and idols of this age!
And I think I’d better use a Happy Puppies picture so I don’t get censored.
For sanity’s sake, let’s look at some of God’s stuff for a moment–like this red eft.
I hardly know what to make of this story, and I would rather not believe it.
WARNING: The link will take you to the Fox News story, details of which I prefer not to mention–especially those involving animal abuse. Read at your own risk. I wish I hadn’t read it.
A Facebook “content moderator,” 42 years old, recently died “after viewing horrific videos” of child and animal abuse, pornography, and other violently bizarre behavior (https://www.foxnews.com/tech/facebook-moderator-dies-horrific-videos-others-share-disturbing-incidents). Some of his co-workers report symptoms suggestive of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, and working conditions that constitute “a terrible, terrible environment.”
Facebook employs some 15,000 moderators worldwide, each expected to review more than 1,000 posts a week so they can strike out content that violates Facebook’s enormous number of rules defining unacceptable content. Some of them told Fox News that they experience stress that is “unworldly.”
They also reported working conditions that featured bedbugs, “body waste” at work stations, blood and feces on bathroom walls, and numerous fights and arguments among the staff.
Again, I would rather not believe this; but there it is.
So why cover it at all? Because Facebook has taken it upon itself to decide on the fitness of billions of posts put up by many millions of viewers–in a fallen world, in a particularly evil epoch of world history–and all with a relative handful of overworked moderators. Playing God isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.
You’d think, with so much vile and filthy content pouring in, they’d spare themselves the labor of ruling whether posts were politically acceptable. They’ve got this stuff to contend with, and they’re worried about some user not being supportive of abortion? I mean, these guys don’t even get paid all that much! Is it really worthwhile, banning people who say mean things about liberals?
Frankly, I don’t know what ought to be done about this. I suppose they could hire more moderators, pay them more, and clean up the workplace–and just drop the whole business of political censorship. There would seem to be more than enough of the really toxic content to keep them busy.
