They sure banned that one quickly. They said merely that I “broke the rules.” So I went and read through all the rules and I couldn’t see one I broke. I’m stumped. Didn’t give me a banned post or anything. Just no reason at all. I hear they do this all the time – ban people for no reason given. I sent in an appeal, but as they didn’t even tell me what they banned me for, I’m quite certain they won’t respond to my appeal either. I hear they do this crap all the time too.
Twitter has hardly changed at all since Elon Musk took over. He’s overhyped. He’s just another POS part of the system. I guess he’s a bit better than the previous owner but not in my case. Just another system monkey. Now I know what people meant in the 60’s when they said they hated “the system.” They were right. The system is shit. Here we are 55 years later and not one thing has changed. The system’s probably shittier than ever. If anything, we’ve gone backwards.
We are turning into a censorship society here. Speech is absolutely censored. Sure you can say what you want here. But can you write what you want? Sure, but where are you going to get it published? No where, as it’s all owned by the private sector and they’ve outsourced it to the state.
We may as well have state censorship here with the private tech social media monopolies outsourcing censorship to the state like this. Sure you can publish but can you publish it anywhere anyone can read it? Of course not. So we went from
“Sure there’s freedom of the press. For everyone who owns a printing press.”
Even if you do, everyone gets their news from totally state-censored mass media. You could publish a little newsletter, but nobody’s going to read it. And then you need advertising dollars. Which are almost all conservative. See the bind? We went from that to,
“Sure you can publish your views on the Net…if you can find a website that will publish them, that is.”
By which they mean any tiny website with no readership. The large social media sites have turned into the newspapers, magazines, and TV and radio stations of yore.
Another way of saying that censorship is about as bad now as it was in the pre-Internet days. I think things have cleared up a bit. Al Jazeera is back on cable and dissident voices on Twitter get a lot of followers. It’s enough to make the PTB worried enough that they are now trying to actually censor and take down problematic speech and even detaining people for holding unpopular views.
France and Germany have banned pro-Hamas demonstrations, and Germany is considering banning all pro-Palestinian demos. The Brits are talking in very loud voices about doing the same.
Republicans are now saying that any immigrants caught supporting Hamas must be deported.
Just got a warning on Facebook. They accused of supporting terrorism. I said I supported Hamas taking the hostages and of course the POW’s. I do in fact. Hey, it’s better than killing them. Why do supporters of terrorist states get support those states all they want to while supporters of popular non-state armies fighting them get punished? What’s the difference?
The great many who subscribe to any press organ (newspaper, magazine, journal, review…) don’t want to get any new information, they rather look for the pleasure of seeing their bias or preconceived ideas confirmed by greater numbers. Whatever you might think the success of any media, consumer count, the only figure that counts when it comes to this sort of thing alone, is proportional to that organ’s success in catering to confirmation bias.
When having a sunbath on a beach I always marveled at the way other sunbathers knew how to unfold their papers above their heads as a kind of near-perfect parasol, to protect themselves against light itself, that is to say against truth itself, against self-questioning among others. In such conditions it is no use to complain about censorship, as the right kind of censorship is the only merchandise most consumers seek.
Yourself who so painstakingly maintain a space of free discussion in certain subjects would feel most pestered if nearly all comments you received were texted in the name of various religions, like bible-thumping Christianity, Saudi-sponsored Islam, and neo-Hindu caste-promoting New Age. even though 90% of humanity even though not taking too seriously any religious sermon feel less oppressed when it is the background noise rather than only science or politics.
Many complain that people in busses, subway tunnels and metro trains look like zombies as they are isolated in their bubble forming around their computer phone, but hadn’t all those people already been enclosed in the private space formed by their wide-open paper and wide-shut eyes for over a century whenever they managed to get hold of a seat in public transportation?
The NYT has never been anything else than a safe space you deploy around your head so as not to protect yourself from the yokels and yahoos that rather bask in the rumors echoed by tabloids. You might find my point of view quite a bit influenced by sociobiology, but the problem is that sociobiology has been common practice in news marketing long before it got theorized about in higher learning institutions.
Press organs are safe spaces protected from undesirable messages and are sold as such. The first big social network, Facebook, very explicitly sold off as a safe space you could control at last so as to allow yourself to be on internet without giving yourself the trouble to pass through unwanted references and suffering the risk of being exposed to unpleasant alternate views before arriving at your desired destination.
Censorship has a great future because protection from unsafe spaces is what is being sold and sought after by both rich and poor.