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Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures, until it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear.
- Harry S. Truman
And it's not just government.
While I have been fairly well-behaved here on the blog, as have my co-bloggers, I have been censored here. Once.
I posted about the Battle of Britain, used a lot of great photos. One individual apparently complained to the powers that be that I had used one of his photos. So down the post came.
No proof, no evidence, no "Hey man, that's my photo, please don't use it." (Or please attribute it to me, or please pay me to use it.) I mean I get it. But an entire post (a good one I thought) taken down? For one bloody photo!
I get it, Google does own the platform, I pay nothing (that's right, zilch, nada, rien) to use the platform. There are rules for using the platform, which I try to obey.
But, some folks are getting antsy about the future of Blogger (which is the platform I use, and yes, it's owned by, and provided by Google, free of charge) so they are bailing to places like Substack, or even setting up their own servers and the like to provide a platform for bloggers who may not toe the party line of their current host platform.
Me? (Us?) We're not so controversial, when we do post on des affaires politique it's usually level-headed without a lot of ranting and raving. Which tends, as you might gather, to attract attention. Often unwanted attention.
But other than the one alleged, unproven instance of copyright violation, I've never had a post taken down by "the authorities." Not even the Book of Face has ever taken down one of my links to the blog. (Because I'm guessing that their bots, er, I mean "fact-checkers," don't chase links to sources outside of the Meta-verse.)
I was recently slapped upon the wrist for making a disparaging remark about Russians, in Russian. Now that comment was removed and I received a "don't do that again" warning. No big deal, I'm guessing that Zuckerborg¹ is in league with the Rooskies, but I digress.
I was rather stunned to see that CDR Salamander was heading for Substack (as has another blogger I enjoy) and not using Blogger anymore. Obviously someone believes that he has pissed in someone's Cheerios and he doesn't want to deal with the censors anymore. I get it.
This place? I have no plans of going anywhere, I want this place to be even-keeled without a lot of extremism to either side of the political spectrum. Heck, I have liberal, nay, progressive friends. Their views and opinions are not my views and opinions, but I don't hate them for it. Everyone is entitled to their opinion.
Not that I despise people, I try not to anyway, but I do like this quote, seems appropriate in a lot of cases ...
If we don't believe in free expression for people we despise, we don't believe in it at all.- Noam Chomsky
Free expression is just that, protected by the Constitution and everything. But some entities have rules for playing on their fields, if I use that field, I try to play by their rules. No matter how rankling those rules might be at times.
Just thought I'd mention that. I'm here to stay, unless the position becomes untenable, then we'll see.
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'Nuff said ...
¹ Not a misspelling, that was intentional, Star Trek geek that I am.
Interestingly enough our amphibian friend cdr Salamander had to migrate from Blogspot to Substack due to similar incidents...
ReplyDeleteSaid event being the catalyst for this post.
DeleteI understand the necessity of leaving the "free" platforms, but that tends to created echo chambers.
ReplyDeleteConcur, which is why I'm staying.
DeleteAlso, because I'm cheap, thrifty if you will, but not willing to spend money to do this. Nor am I willing to charge people for reading my stuff.
I'm perfectly willing to charge people, but who'd pay?
DeleteHeh. Ya never know, there's one born every minute. 😁
Delete"Free expression is just that, protected by the Constitution..."
ReplyDeleteI'm not a lawyer, but I do enjoy reading (your blog is either #1 or #2 every AM), and I very much enjoy parsing words in my favorite language.
1st Amendment: "Congress shall make no law...abridging the freedom of speech..."
"Zuckerborg" et al is not the U.S. Congress and he can do damn-well what he pleases and make laws/restrictions regarding the use of his product and in the U.S. no one should be able to force him to do otherwise. No, I don't think what any (private-owned) platform does or can do is encompassed by the 1st Amendment which places a restriction only upon Congress
That's one of the points I was trying to make, their ballpark, their rules. However, when it's to force a political agenda, then it's a different kettle of fish. (Mixing metaphors can be such fun.)
DeleteLiberty conveys the responsibility to allow someone whose beliefs you abhor the right to express, and publish, said abhorrent beliefs without prior restraint! Even though it nauseates you!
DeleteMike
I disagree a bit with the "their ballpark, their rules" point though. They then become editors, but they also enjoy the protections of being free from lawsuits. It's one or the other, a ballpark that is open and anyone can play at their own risk, or one with rules (that pays taxes and we can sue to park owner). "No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider." —Communications Decency Act of 1996, Section 230(c)(1) Schmuckerburg and Gloggle want their cake and to censor it too.
DeleteBANG! Tuna nailed it! Not enough people realize the whole thing is rigged against legacy America, that I love. F@ck USA INC., taken over by Satanic Commies. Hope that doesn't trip any algos. Glad yer here, visit daily. Love yer site.
DeleteTuna (et al) - I didn't know that. Nice to know.
DeleteAnd smart money says Zuckerberg is in bed with Zelensky, not Russia. Based on the $400,000,000 he "invested" in the 2020 election.
Delete(I'm finally starting to remember to hit the drop down to enter my name before I respond)
DeleteAs pointed out, their ballpark, their rules. But then, as Tuna points out, rather than just offering a platform, they act as editors but still hide behind the, "Hey! We're not responsible for the content! All we do is provide the platform!" laws. OK, fine, sort of. But when the platform operates and censors at the request of the State, or even one political party, a line has been crossed. Also, there seems to be a tendency to disappear posts by conservatives if mildly critical of progressive polices, deeming them violent or hate speech, but saying that leftist calls for riot and other violence, up to and including shootings, don't violate "community standards." Standards which are often subjective and ever changing.
matism - You're probably right.
DeleteJoe - Exactly.
DeleteEugene Volokh, over at The Volokh Conspiracy on the Reason site, has numerous posts regarding the Sec. 230 internet platform controversy.
DeleteOne case concerning which was argued before SCOTUS on 21 Feb 2023. Go here, and select a time period (I chose 12 mos.) and "Volokh Conspiracy": https://reason.com/search/230/
The Issue before SCOTUS: "Whether Section 230(c)(1) of the Communications Decency Act immunizes interactive computer services when they make targeted recommendations of information provided by another information content provider, or only limits the liability of interactive computer services when they engage in traditional editorial functions (such as deciding whether to display or withdraw) with regard to such information." You will see that there are numerous amici briefs that you can peruse at your leisure, if that interests you.
https://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/gonzalez-v-google-llc/
Lots of good stuff at those links. I'll be spending some time over there. (SCOTUS has a blog?!?!?)
DeleteWhat with recent events, making a disparaging remark about Russians is OK in my book Sarge. Your blog, your rules Sarge, their platform, their rules. Good to visit a civilized place though, thanks.
ReplyDeleteAnd to wit the comment was along the lines of "Russians being jerks, ya know, Russians being Russians." Which, to be fair, doesn't apply to all Russians.
DeleteSarge, it is an interesting conundrum - not just for for bloggers, but for platforms. While likely Google (or Facebook or instagram or any of the socials) make no direct money off of the users, if they throttle back the conversation too much, they risk becoming not only their own echo chambers, but eventually loosing audience. Facebook is already facing this problem: for my children's generation, it is completely "not cool" to be on a platform with your parents, so they are largely off - leaving it to the 30 years olds and up, which for advertising and marketing purposes, ends up being a declining pool of revenue - for example, in the last five years I can think of one item that I purchased off a social media ad.
ReplyDelete(Side note: To be fair, those organizations may also have a great deal of hidden cost and money loss simply by their current structure and format; Twitter's revamp and the fact that only one of every four employee that worked there in November 2022 currently works there and there have been no significant loss in functionality suggests there is another way to drive revenue enhancement.)
That said, I (to date) have not found Blogger's rules to be to the point that I have had to either change what I write or how I write it. I had one post recent "kicked back" from 2017; after freaking out about what I might have said (and struggling to find the post), turns out it was a link that was a risk now. Fair enough: I changed the link to a reference and resubmitted it. No big deal. And, like you, I have a group of commenters that are adult enough that they willingly abide by the rules of the house and can have mature conversations while disagreeing with each other.
I have started to notice bloggers dropping onto their own servers or Substack as well, and given the current environment, I certainly can understand why they might feel it to be necessary - although to your point, likely it will create an echo chamber effect, which is just as bad. Ultimately, if the struggle for hearts and minds is to be won, it will happen because people can actually still talk and debate with each other, not retreat behind ramparts of platforms and mutter amongst themselves.
Like you, I will keep posting where I am (and regularly backing up -you know, just in case....).
We are of like minds.
DeleteAnother problem is that when "private entity" platforms get too large (like Google, Facebook), they become the only game in town. Like before Ma Bell was broken up. They set the rules and there was no alternative.
DeleteAnother good point!
DeleteI thought that Phib just had the Substack as a divert site mirroring his old place, "just in case". Did I miss something (which would not surprise me)?
ReplyDeleteJohn Blackshoe
I think it was in yesterday's post he mentioned that as of 01 APRIL he would no longer be posting to his Blogger account. It would stay up but he was done with it. "Just in case" became now.
DeleteSingle sourcing is rarely a good plan. When some think that silencing others is a good plan (and was there ever a time that wasn't being tried?) a better plan is to have multiple megaphones ... that don't all use the same batteries. what's going to take the place of Substack?
ReplyDeleteGood point, what comes after Substack?
DeleteTwo points, maybe, as you all know I can get kind of 'talkative' once I get wound up.
ReplyDeleteRe: Cmdr Salamander - I can see his posts getting zapped for current posting. Same with others. But it's not. It's posts made 5 to 10 years ago that are being removed for no other reason than fainting pussies (short word for people who are pusillanimous (means weak and wimpy)) or people out to silence a moderate voice (which the good Commander is.) That right there, going deep into the past in order to cancel someone, smacks of Orwellian-levels of thought-policing that, quite frankly, reminds me of the bullscat pulled by the Soviets and by the ChiComs and the Khymer Rouge and by radical Islamic governments throughout history (said governments flopped between liberal and radical and so you'd get a burst of intellectualism that would then be wiped out by the following radicalism.) So, no, Gaggle and Fecesbrook and all the rest who practice back-fact checking and shadow-banning and thought-policing and outright Marxist ideological control? Shame on you. Your grandparents and great-grandparents and great-great-grandparents didn't suffer and die for you to be wankers of the highest caliber. One of my friends was wiped off of FB because he fought and proved that there are people within the last 10 years that still reuse tinfoil and such. At which time he went dark on all social media and blogging etal because the evil snitches and stasi were reporting to his bosses as to what he was posting.
So what happened to the Flaming Lizard that forced him to jump ship can happen to anyone. Anything you write can and will be censored by some fart-licker of a useless person. Or an outright globalist communist. Which, come to think of it, are the same things...
Second point: Elon Musk, the most successful African-American to ever live in the modern age (not rich, I mean successful, there were a lot of rich dictators who were just plain buttheads) has proven that a hands-off approach and only whacking things that are patently illegal (child pornography, slavery of one form or another (like... child sexual trafficking) and other outright criminal activity has allowed Twitter to become a haven of free thought and the users have been pretty mellow about not being a-holes. So, yes, Blogspot is Google's baby, but, dang it, Google, grow a set, ifn you know what I mean.
Further ranting may come out later.
Peace out, y'all!
Good rant, OAFS.
Good points Beans. If you wish to expand upon all this ...
DeleteI've got nothing for tomorrow, too soon?
Nah, I've got it. You know, somedays I jjust need to read all the comment before going forward.
DeleteNo man, you go with your gut, I like that!
DeleteJust got back from the Czech Republic. Tour guide was in his late 40’s early 50’s. Talked about living under that “Other” form of government when he was younger. It was scarily similar to things that are happening now in a country I love. Censorship was critical back then. History repeating itself? Just sayin!
ReplyDeleteEven scarier is the wave of the new Cultural Revolutionists not caring about free speech and no censorship because it's all about the feelings and hurtfulness of bad-thought. Not realizing that, as in any revolution, the banner wavers are the first to be ground down by the Revolution, followed by anyone else who's standing around.
DeleteThey, the new Red Brigade/Little Red Bookists/Leninists/Stalinists/outright Marxists, don't have the wish to have logic and learned discourse where free exchanges of ideas are debated and argued and people are allowed to think and express their own opinions. Amazing that Liberal has now become "classist conformist" where one has to fit neatly into their Place of Life and any exceptions will be treated as cancer. And class can only breed class, stay in the class, no migration up and down the class ladder, almost as if India's Caste system is in effect. Think I'm wrong? I know people of high melanin levels who were beat and ostracized by their 'community' for 'acting too blanco' and they knew others who had been killed for the same. And the blanco leftist community, instead of supporting the outliers, supported the 'community' in their actions against said outliers. Same with other classes, like being of a certain demographic that is now labeled as the only bad group that is allowed to be portrayed on tv and in the media (if you think 'evil blanco statists and supremecists, you are correct, eveb if one was actually one of them and changed their minds, nope, evil blanco supremecist for life.)
Gah.
Hasn't helped that we've now had 3 presidential administrations in the last 40 years that have set up Stasi-levels of 'tip lines' and 'record and report' sites for Americans to report bad-think about other Americans. Funny, those administrations are of the same affiliation as the two big 'report bad think' administrations of the first half of the 20th Century. Hmmmm....
Anonymous @ 9:56 AM - Yes, we seem to be headed that way.
DeleteBeans - We live in scary times.
DeleteI used to believe in "It's the owner's sandbox. If I'm going to play in it I'll follow the owner's rules". Lately I've changed my mind in certain cases. Here I'll abide by it. My reasoning is that there is no advertising here. When we start talking about Facebook, YouTube and others, there's advertising. My presence is generating revenue for the site's owner or company. To me, that's the same as paying for it. It reminds me of what happened at a local Mall several years ago. A certain Group was handing out flyers and staging rallies in the common area of the Mall. The owners asked them to leave. Well the Group took them to Court saying that they had a right to do what they were doing, because, the common area of the Mall was the new "Town Square". The local Courts being of the same mind as the Group, found in the Group's favor. Now a couple of years ago a different "Group" started doing the same things as the first "Group". The thing was that the second "Group's" views were opposite of the views of the first "Group". Even though the first "Group" had the common areas of the Mall declared a "Town Square", they went to Court to have the second "Group" banned from it.
ReplyDeleteThe use of advertising puts a whole new spin on things. Good points Jim. Thanks!
DeleteI believe that Beans has pretty well summed up my thoughts.
ReplyDeleteIn the end, it won't matter which platform you use if the powers that be just shut down the whole internet in order to control communication.
I may be cynical, but I may also be right.
If you're a cynic, then the only time you're surprised it's usually pleasant. Cynic, realist? These days those are synonyms.
DeleteIn Babylon 5: Crusade / The Needs of the People the ending /spoiler/ message "The Alien refugee recorded a video message were he explains:
ReplyDelete"The final edict came down. The death warrant for everything we have built as a people. They are burning the books; they are burning the music, burning the art, tearing down the statues. Our leaders say that art is a waste of time, that art is decadent, subversive, and indecent. They say we must become more competitive and aggressive. That we cannot support the drain on our moral strength placed upon us by ideas that do not support the goals of the state. Stories and music that do not reinforce the will of the state Art.... They have erased it all from the planets databanks and burned all the copies in private hands."
Scary as f ... written 25 years ago.
That's the way totalitarian states roll. It is indeed scary as f ...
Delete