Big Bird is watching you

I don’t know where the image originated but I’d love to give it credit. I can’t stop laughing at it.

So, Twitter is, as I have long suspected, capable of and willing to read all the DMs you post and can recover deleted tweets and DMs. And if they don’t like you. it’s the oblivion button for you.

Shadow banning is real, as Twitter employees admit in the video. Shadow banning is when they press the oblivion button but don’t tell you. You keep on posting on Twitter as if nothing happened but hardly anyone is seeing the tweets.

Well it’s their site, they can ban who they like. It would be nice if they were honest about it but hey, it’s their reputation, they can do what they like with it.

There is one person banned from this site (one person on the whole planet so objectionable that even I won’t listen to him) and he likes to pretend I am affecting his right to free speech. I’m not, he can talk all he wants but not at my place. Really, being banned on a little backwater blog like this one doesn’t amount to global censorship by anyone’s standards.

Likewise, those banned on Twitter have not lost the right to free speech, in fact I’d say they are better off exercising that right in a place where people are actually listening rather than on a site that doesn’t want to hear them.

I have an account at Gab, which does not engage in shadow banning. It’s claimed to be a ‘right wing site’ but I have seen crazy progressive lefties ranting on there and none of them are banned. They have the same free speech as everyone else, they just don’t have the power to get their opponent shut down by whining at the management. It’s a bit Wild West, sure, but you stand or fall on your own merits there. No mollycoddling. No preferential treatment. It’s more like real life.

Twitter is in danger of turning itself into a Guardian-like echo chamber where only one side of the argument is allowed. The other side is simply shut out. As the Guardian and maybe Twitter might one day realise, that causes people to give up and go away. Why bang your head on a brick wall? If you are a ‘racist-Nazi-bigot’ for even daring to question their orthodoxy, why bother to question them at all? By extension, why read or listen to them any more? Leave them to their own devices and if that means funding dries up, well that’s their problem.

In other but much the same news, Virgin trains have decided not to sell the Daily Heil any more because it does not fit with their Leftie image. Okay. Don’t sell a very popular paper (I admit to buying one once to line the bottom of a guinea pig cage) that anyone can access for free on the internet while sitting on your trains. Well, they could if your train wifi worked. ‘We have wifi, it doesn’t work’. How very Soviet of you, Virgin. What a pickle eh, Branston?

Or they can buy one at the newsagents before they get on the train. I think I will if I have occasion to ride Virgin trains in the future. I won’t bother to read it, it’s bad for your blood pressure, I’ll just leave it on the table or seat when I get off.

But hey, if Virgin want to get mass-fucked over their perceived curtailing of free speech (it isn’t, if you want the Mail get one on the way to the train) it’s up to them. Not my concern.

See, I don’t care about the Daily Heil. I do care about freedom of speech. Banning speech you don’t like leads to a very dark road. It just pushes those opinions underground where you can’t see them until they explode.

It doesn’t matter what paper they chose to ban. If they had banned the Grauniad, which I see as the opposite extreme, I would feel the same way. It puts a commercial company, supported by government, in charge of what you choose to think and that is a clear definition of fascism.

The same is true of Twitter, Farcebok and all the ‘anti-fascist’ movements. Agree with us or we will silence you the fascist way, you fascists. Look, if you’re going to insult me (and I have been called ‘fascist’ for trying to reasonably work out what these people think – I came away not wondering ‘what’ but ‘whether’) at least look up a definition of what you are calling me. Read it, understand it and look in a mirror. Is it you or me?

For once try to be honest with yourself. Being honest to others is a long way down the line, just try to make a start.

I have considered getting back into share buying again now the latest round of penury has passed. I doubt it would be the last, I am shit at finances and am paying tax this year for the first (and possibly last) time in ages. I would not buy shares in Twitter, Farcebok, Google or the like, nor would I buy shares in their right wing opposites. You want to make a profit, you need to be politically neutral in your provision of services. otherwise you cut your potential customer base in half and it doesn’t matter which half you pick, you become an echo chamber that soon becomes boring. Even to those on ‘your side’.

Again, it’s Twitter’s business, they can ruin it how they like. There are no laws forcing them to service those they disagree with. It’s not like they are Christian baker shops.

Just be aware that the Thought Police run those platforms and if they don’t like you they will push you off the edge. They can access private messages and recall deleted private and public messages.

You are not obliged to Tweet anything, but anything you do Tweet can and will be used against you in court.

Just remember that last line.