Thursday, October 15, 2020

Why I'm not on Twitter or Facebook

 They're not even trying to hide the fact that they own you:

Twitter has locked the account of White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany because she shared a story about Hunter Biden and Ukraine.

Now in all honesty, I haven't cared for the platforms for quite a while.  I don't like Facebook because it has always been rotten about its user's privacy, and all y'all know that I just can't keep myself to the 17 character (or whatever it is) tweet limit.  It's the same reason that I pretty much dropped off of Gab.ai.

But this underlines the fact that they own their users.  Not cool.  I'll stick with our little corner of the Blogosphere, thank you very much.

But probably the biggest objection that we've heard (and heard again, and again) about Donald Trump is that he violates long standing norms of behavior.  What's interesting is that his opponents are the ones who are now the biggest violators of norms.  Here is a media company censoring the White House Press Secretary.  [blink] [blink]

Heck, even a lefty hack like Jake Tapper sums up the situation:


So no thanks.  It's so bad that a raving libertarian like me is totally down with the Fed.Gov breaking up the Twitter and Facebook (and Google) monopolies and declaring them to be publishers, not platforms.  Let it all fight out in the courts, but just those announcements will tank the stock prices which will make it hard for them to acquire new companies and executive talent.  They're the modern Robber Barons and some Trust Busting is well past due.*

Note: blogger Ann Althouse looks at the story's provenance and is skeptical about the emails.  It's an interesting read - not calling them "fake" but rather suspicious.  But she agrees that Twitter and Facebook haven't covered themselves in glory here.

* UPDATE 15 October 2020 09:37: Interestingly, Miguel posted the exact same idea about libertarians.

UPDATE 15 October 2020 09:47: This is an interesting perspective about why the "Streisand Effect" applies so closely here:

Simply put, there is not enough staff at Facebook & Twitter, and they are neither smart enough nor subtle enough, to censor ALL the “fake news” while also suppressing the politically sensitive (read “damaging to Democrats”) real stories. As a result, they are Ham Handed and focus on the “stuff that matters” (as all major corporation management does). The necessary consequence of this, much like the Streisand Effect, is that attempts to HIDE stores become advertising of the stories AND become strong evidence for the veracity of the Story. Essentially: Their actions are a negative indicator. The more they holler “Fake” the more we hear “Here Be Truth”.

... 

Here’s the original story:

https://nypost.com/2020/10/14/email-reveals-how-hunter-biden-introduced-ukrainian-biz-man-to-dad/

UPDATE 15 October 2020 11:48: Lawrence has the second drop from the New York Post about Hunter's corruption with China.  No doubt the Post is getting a lot more views today because of the Streisand Effect.  Oft evil will shall evil mar, and all that.

9 comments:

Glen Filthie said...

I love Gab. I don't post, but I get all the info and commentary those media slobs are trying to suppress.

One thing makes me believe the flap might be legit: the mass media are slaves to obvious lunatics and will happily give ample time to guys that are obviously nuts and charlatans. They sell and make good copy. If I were to go on Twitter and seriously propose that Biden was a corpse that was reanimated by evil space aliens - I'd probably be allowed to run for all I'm worth.

They only censor when they're scared. And I can smell that pamper full of fright all the way up here in Alberta. So can the media - they are well aware they can no longer cover over this kind of depravity without suffering for it. Their ratings are diving and the layoffs just keep going as they get crushed by public opinion. They are beginning to react now too. It might be too soon to hope - but yesterday, CNN, of all the networks - unloaded on that cunned stunt, Nancy Pelosi. They raked her right over the coals and she darned well deserved it. This latest about Biden Jr was the first actual "scoop" the media has gone public with in decades.
We may be seeing a tectonic shift in politics and the media. I certainly hope so.

Miguel GFZ said...

J. Kb. wrote the post, not me. If it is well written, smart post, it is always him. :)

HMS Defiant said...

I have poor impulse control so no twitter. I also despise fb and only have an account there in case my daughter on the other coast wants to contact me that way. So far, in 14 years she has resisted the urge.

SiGraybeard said...

I long ago dropped Facebook and never had Twitter or the others. I look at pictures on Pinterest (which goes back and forth between thinking I'm a 15 year old girl or 15 year old boy). That's about the extent of my social media.

Any social media place that canned this story has just given up any claim of being a platform rather than a publisher. They're publishing all the way and there's no honest claim otherwise.

The law is there, the case is plain, all it needs is a law firm looking for the publicity to take them on and ride it through the appeals process all the way to the Supremes.

Old NFO said...

Never had twitter either... And FaceBork is ridiculous!

ProudHillbilly said...

If it wasn't for pics of granddaughter I'd take my account down, too.

ASM826 said...

What about TikTok? Are you posting over there?

Borepatch said...

ASM826, only in Chinese ...

MarcusZ1967 said...

And, didn't one of the Biden lawyers tried to reposess the laptop?