In reality the problem became so much worse, and at a speed I was then incapable of comprehending. I made the classic mistake of not understanding how motivating hate can be, how hate is inspiring new ways to silence the public and to control the narrative.
Fascist Germany and the Communists of Russia, China and North Korea are nothing compared to those running Social Media in the once Free World. And now, our government is backing the death our First Amendment.
“We are regularly making sure social media platforms are aware of the latest narratives dangerous to public health that we and many other Americans are seeing across all of social and traditional media and we work to engage with them to better understand the enforcement of social media platform policies,” Psaki told reporters Friday.
I posted this late last year:
“COVID19 doesn’t scare me. I was stationed in Thailand and lived off base most of the time I was there. I drank the water, ate in town. I should be immune to everything after that.”
The post was flagged for spreading false information about COVID19. I had the same reaction you are now feeling. An obvious joke was flagged as false information.
Is there false information out there on social media? Of course, there is, people are not perfect and people have agendas they are pushing. But the First Amendment says the government can’t engage in any way to stop it. We the people have do this on our own. It is we, the people, that have the moral responsibility to do the work, to research the source and what truth there is in those sources.
Social Media is run as an absolute dictatorship. Oh, sure they offer you the chance to disagree with their decision that one has violated their rules, but that is all it is. You get to check a box. Either you agree or disagree with the ruling. You have no say other than that. Explanations, reasons, and logic are forbidden. So much so, that you find it impossible to make your case in any form. I did find an email address for appeals. It proved useless;
This is an automatically generated Delivery Status Notification.
Delivery to the following recipients failed permanently:
“So, here is the email, but we’ve blocked all incoming emails.
“You’re guilty.”
“I disagree.”
“Fine, the ruling stands.”
“Wait, don’t I get a chance to explain?”
“Now that’s funny. Of course not.”
Social Media has no concept of satire, sarcasm, or humor. The I in the AI program they use, is for Idiot, not Intelligence. They give you no real chance to correct a poorly worded post. And you have no chance at all of explaining the post.
This post sent me to Facebook Jail of 7 days:
“Adverbs. R K Rowlings was absolutely, completely, and hopelessly in love with overly using them. Her editor should be shot.”
It was in response to a post asking what drives you nuts in how people write. The AI decided it was a “creditable threat of violence upon a person.” Anyone that knows what an adverb is, even a 5 th grader, can see the sarcasm in the post. What specific person is threatened is never addressed. There are many kinds of editors involved in publishing a book. Maybe the AI should be AM for Artificial Moron. If that was the programmer’s goal, he or she it hit it dead center.
Social Media has ruled that common phrases used for hundreds of years as hyperbole, are now actual threats. Newspeak has arrived and is being enforced.
What is being done about it? Nothing. In fact, those that can do something have sided with social media, even to the point of blocking new platforms that abide our right to fee speech.
I’d give some credence to the argument that Social Media sites are private enterprises and therefore able to decide what cannot be posted on their sites, but they have abdicated that argument by aggressively advocating the shutting down of sites that won’t bow to their demands to limit the speech of others.
Sites like YouTube are de-monetizing videos that merely mention forbidden subject matter, even including using the subject word in the videos that explain what subjects YouTube won’t allow payments over content, even if you meet all the other requirements. Worse still, YouTube can place ads on your content without paying you for them. It gets worse, you have no control over the kinds of ads placed on your content. So, you could have a YouTube Channel about Gun Repair, which because it is about guns keeps you from making money from them, and YouTube can then run anti-gun ads on your channel and make those ads non-skippable for those that watch your clips. Another example, you are a beekeeper, and you are explaining how the worker bees will kill remaining queen cells when a new queen hatches out before the others. Use the term “they murder/kill those within the remaining cells”, and that video is now not making you a dime, even if it is viewed a hundred hours a day for a year. But YouTube is STILL selling ad space on your content.
Time to demand Congress to come up with a version of the Ma Bell breakup law for social media.
Big Tech is controlling our speech and it needs to stop. The FCC needs to start handing out multi-billion-dollar fines to those companies that are blocking or making it hard to impossible to search new sites dedicated to free speech.
Don’t count on your elected to act unless forced to. They owe Big Tech their power and are loath to rock the boat.
Are we a free people, or are we subjects of the government that has in essences told us to our faces we are too F-ing stupid to think for ourselves?
The problem is ours, what are we going to do about it?