How do I know that? Because I've been banned from Facebook for a post observing that homogenital sex acts are the #1 source of HIV/AIDS transmission in America. A fact that anyone with a finger and an internet connection can find corroborated on the CDC's website. Posting that information, according to Facebook, violated their community standards. Because Facebook wants to be a "safe place" for people to connect with the world around them.
Unless you're a Christian.
This page remains on Facebook despite being reported. How do I know it's been reported? Because I reported it. (What's good for the goose.) I reported it to prove a point. That the "standards" of social media sites like Facebook are arbitrarily devised and selectively enforced. And the fact this page still exists illustrates that. Facebook is a wholly owned and operated leftist enterprise. And what that means, is that even if there's no "official" policy decreeing the censure of Conservative beliefs and speech, there's a de facto policy to that effect by virtue of the fact the preponderance (if not all) of the site's moderators are leftists, who are naturally inclined to take offense to Conservative views and censor those who dispense them, and conversely take none from or grant leniency to those who share their own ideological disposition. Assuming there's moderators at all that is, and such decisions are not simply being made entirely by a leftist devised algorithm, which is consequently imbrued with their bias.
This is all further compounded still by the fact "self-policing" on such platforms in general almost always favors the left. As we all well know there are no people on earth more intolerant of dissenting views, and more inclined to complain about such, than leftists. So an open to all platform like Facebook that heavily relies on the community to "report" inappropriate content, is almost invariably going to result in a lopsided dispensation of justice that favors the left, as leftists are far more inclined to use the report feature than the opposition, and commonly abuse it by using it as a tool to suppress dissent. (Instead of reporting legitimately inappropriate content, they incessantly report content in disparity with their own political platform, purely in order to get those content removed and those who contribute such banned.) So the majority of "reports" will be lodged against Conservatives by leftists, and then reviewed by leftist moderators/algorithms, employed by a company with a leftist bias resulting in a system that's stacked against Conservatives on multiple levels.
But before I continue allow me to opine upon social media in general. One of the more insidious aspects of social media I noticed long ago, is the manner in which it's conditioning its users, and the manner in which its users are seemingly nigh completely oblivious to their being conditioned. Under the pretext of providing a place for people to "connect," Facebook and sites like it are molding the standards for discourse not only on Facebook, but in society at large. As more and more people participate on social media sites, more and more people become subject to their demonstrably leftist "standards" for discourse, allowing the owners and moderators of those sites to essentially direct and dictate the parameters of more and more of the discourse in society in general. As Facebook increasingly supplants "the public square," Facebook accrues ever more power over an ever larger amount of public discourse in proportion.
The fact is sites like Facebook are becoming the primary means by which people communicate with friends, or other like minded individuals, and this provides such sites a profound degree of coercive power over its users. To run afoul of Facebook, or violate its "standards," can result in losing your primary means of connecting with friends, people who share your values, i.e., a large portion of your social circle, in an instant. I know people with similar values I've met exclusively through Facebook, and have only ever communicated with through Facebook, and whose personal contact information I don't have for example. In the event of a Facebook ban, I have no way of communicating with them at all. And avoiding this outcome, which Facebook and sites like it well know, can induce in people a significant inclination to defer to retain those connections, or at least the ease with which they're maintained through sites like Facebook. (These coercive tactics are all the more insulting, when considering that data-mongering sites like Facebook profit handsomely from our participation on their platform, and yet have the audacity to dictate to their users how they may think and speak. Facebook needs its users, not vice versa. You can exist without participating on Facebook. Facebook could not exist as it does now without you participating.)
Simply put, websites like Facebook are using their platforms to subtly make their standards for discourse and the exchange of ideas, the standards for discourse and the exchange of ideas at large. They're using their websites to condition their users to conduct themselves according to the left's standards for "acceptable" language and expression of ideas, not just on Facebook, but beyond it as well. People who are repeatedly banned from Facebook for using language or expressing ideas that Facebook deems inappropriate, will usually defer and alter their vocabulary and/or simply avoid expressing certain ideas, in order to continue using it. And through this process of repeated incremental trammeling of certain speech and ideas in disparity with its standards, Facebook hopes to gradually produce permanent vocabulary revision and habitual self-censorship in its users in general, i.e., to get people to gradually stop using words or expressing ideas that Facebook doesn't want used or expressed, resulting in Facebook's standards gradually becoming the standards for discourse throughout society. Social media is effectively becoming the arbiter of what's acceptable speech and thought as its users are, largely without realizing it, being trained to talk and think in a certain way that conforms to the preferences of Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, et al., all of which are blatantly leftist owned and operated entities.
This in and of itself is bad enough. Much worse is that the state has started to figure all of this out too.
Both the Mainstream Media and government in the U.S. have been seeking to illegitimatize and suppress "alternative media" for years, in a naked attempt to retain their status as the exclusive font of information in America, and thanks to complicit social media platforms like Facebook they're achieving that objective with a newfound efficacy. This is superbly illustrated by the fact "F*ck Christianity" still exists, but the Proud Boys page and anyone associated with it has apparently been banned.
Why were they banned? Because they're affiliated with "white supremacy" according to the left; the be-all end-all of ready made bogus justifications for trampling free speech. Are you a leftist? Want to suppress dissent? Just accuse the opposition of "white supremacy" and, whether true or not, you've got cause to silence them completely. Meanwhile, the "Black Panther Party Official Page" remains up with all its members apparently unmolested.
A page that, in addition to the typical commie spiel of demanding "guaranteed income" and "free health care," states "all Panthers must learn to operate and service weapons correctly," in addition to the odd statement "if we ever have to take captives do not ill-treat them." Why they would need to "take captives" exactly I couldn't say. My cursory examination revealed no explanation. Elsewhere on the page in the comments section, one person asks if the page endorses the "hate" and "violence" of the original Black Panther Party (on which the page claims to be predicated), and another person replies (in all capital letters) "all actions of the Black Panther Party was justifiable 100."
Near the top of the page I saw a video posted by a man named Abdul Shakur.
Shakur's videos are the all too familiar and banal sort of vacuous black racist commie screeds. He bashes "capitalism," which he derogates as "Euro-centric," and promotes "collectivism" apparently ignorant of the fact that white Europeans like Robert Owen were the pioneers of modern collectivist ideologies like Socialism and Communism also. He says "it takes a village to raise a child," openly promotes "black nationalism," and clings to the refuted mythos that black people were the architects of ancient Egyptian civilization.
"Genomic material showed that ancient Egyptians shared little DNA with modern sub-Saharan Africans. [...] Strikingly, the mummies were more closely related to ancient Europeans and Anatolians than to modern Egyptians."Shakur in the first video recounts that he "loved" committing his first act of violence, and states in the second he has "no regrets" about perpetrating the crime for which he's currently incarcerated. "I smile every time I think about it," says Shakur (43:44) in reference to the crime that put him in prison, which he implies in the first video was the killing of one or more white men. "If I was to get out today I'd do the same thing." Shakur assures the viewers he's still "prepared to [...] kill if (he) must," and that he's "not gonna stop pulling that trigger in the service of (his) people." Yet despite these statements, despite referring to his incarceration as "an honor," Shakur conveys unhappiness with the prospect of being denied parole. (Is it an honor or not, Abdul?)
"Damn right I'm gonna do it again. This time I'ma get away with it." - James Earl Harvey (A.K.A. Abdul Olugbala Shakur).Gee, I wonder why the parole board might deny him? Clearly "racism." Just like "racism" is the reason Shakur was jailed in the first place, and not (by his own account) his taking of the law into his own hands. Shakur is, if nothing else, an abject moron. After nearly four decades rotting in prison, he's still blatantly learned nothing, and leaning on the crutch of illusory victimhood no less today than the day he first stepped foot into prison. He's completely oblivious to the fact it was his own racism that got him where he is.
Oh yeah. Did I mention he's filming this video from prison, where he's apparently serving life, after shooting two men serving in the United States Navy and stabbing one or more prison guards or inmates? Finding information was somewhat difficult, as Shakur seems to be a Nation Of Islam convert, whose birth name I believe is James Earl Harvey. Concluding this from The details of People V. Harvey matching those given by Shakur himself. (I eventually heard him refer to himself as James Harvey later in another video.) Shakur, who openly confesses to the crime(s) for which he's incarcerated in the video, of course construes himself as a black knight in shining armor who killed to protect his people, and now sits languishing in prison unjustly as a result of institutional racism. He claims the murder he perpetrated was retribution for the men raping a black woman, yet I failed to find any mention of this rape on the website linked above. (Surely, you'd think, he or his defense would have considered that worth mentioning as a mitigating factor).
It's worth noting that Shakur (i.e., Harvey) had allegedly committed, and pled guilty to, armed robbery several months prior to shooting the two servicemen. That victim's account of how that incident transpired is strikingly similar to the shootings for which Shakur is currently in prison. So, infer from that what you will. But I'd not be surprised if the motivation for the shootings was nothing more than armed robbery, that escalated to murder due to Black Panther Shakur's racist disposition, and the retaliation for rape aspect is simply a fantasy concocted by Shakur after the fact to advance the narrative he's the real victim of a racist justice system. And now he sits puking his racist tripe from behind bars to anyone who will listen, which is apparently primarily far-left black racists on Facebook, and Facebook apparently has no problem with that.
And this isn't the only example. There's a slew of Black Panther Party pages on Facebook, some of which openly depict armed militants.
Searching for Ku Klux Klan on Facebook yields no groups recognizably affiliated with the KKK by the way. Only miscellaneous images and posts, which all seem to be denouncing it. While searching for Black Panther Party conversely produces group, after group, after group.
Overt white pride of any kind is apparently persona non grata on Facebook. But black pride ostentatiously abounds. As usual the double standard is as flagrant as it is nauseating.
So Proud Boys is banned. Why? Because it's "far-right." Because promoting nationalism, violence, and having ties to racist organizations or individuals, is wrong and against Facebook's "community standards." Except when they're not. These things are wrong when done by Trump or a white person in the eyes of the left and Facebook, but it's perfectly okay for far-left pages operated and used by non-whites with affiliations to racist organizations to exist, promote violence, and use the site to "recruit" all day long. So, in summary, making a post that offends "homosexuals" or leftists can get you banned. But a page dedicated exclusively to insulting Christians, or advancing militant black nationalism, etc., is perfectly acceptable according to Facebook's community standards and doesn't conflict with their aspirations of creating a "safe place" at all. But enough about Facebook's hypocrisy.
I simply cannot fail to observe (nor could any intelligent person) the similarity between what sites like Facebook are currently doing here, and the state-sanctioned purging of dissenting views and information from social media being perpetrated by America's Socialist cousins across the Atlantic.
As I said well over a decade ago now the left always manipulates language to advance it's agenda. It can't attack "free speech," at least not directly. So instead what it does is seek to criminalize "hate," and then simply apply that term to anyone who dares express ideas or speech in disparity with the Socialist platform. Under the pretext of suppressing, and eradicating "hate," opposing views are methodically being extirpated. And if you dare disagree or resist, then the label is likewise applied to you, and you too become a loathsome supporter or practitioner of "hate." Social media in Europe has been blatantly conscripted by the left to this end by threatening it with massive fines for failure to suppress (what the left deems) "hate speech."
This has no doubt significantly influenced the policies of site's like Facebook on a macro level. (Though I highly doubt guys like Zuckerberg, who are themselves leftists, needed much coercing.) It's pretty obvious, based upon the banning of Groups like Proudboys, that Facebook is applying these measures developed in response to European threats of legal action, at least to some extent, to its platform as a whole. And that therefore European law, which is now ostentatiously criminalizing speech and dictating what may be said on social media, is impacting if not dictating standards for discourse here in America through its own widespread use of social media. It cannot be emphasized enough that a foreign, European power trammeling American liberty, is utterly antithetical to everything on which America is Founded.
In the past I would have agreed without question that a private website is exempted from providing Constitutional protections to things like speech. But most websites are not Facebook. Most websites are not a forum for discourse at all, and even among those websites that are, most are not so massive in their scope and prolific in their use as to have essentially supplanted and become the public forum like Facebook. Vastly more people, it would seem, now congregate and discuss politics on Facebook than they do at local town halls or city council meetings. Social media sites like Facebook have, for all intents and purposes, become the primary medium, and therefore the unofficial and de facto forum, for public debate and discourse. As such they've essentially ceased to be a "private" enterprises, and now do have an obligation to respect Constitutionally protected liberties like speech (political speech most of all). And they've no one to blame for assuming that obligation but themselves; it's a product of their own uninhibited ambition to permeate American life in the pursuit of ad revenue. (It's ironic in no small part I might add, that commies like Mark Zuckerberg who support the nationalization of other private enterprises like health care, would undoubtedly oppose the nationalization of their own.)
So if I've not been clear enough, allow me to be as unambiguous as possible now. The more people that use social media, the more ability social media (and potentially, inevitably, the state) has to control the parameters of public discourse through speech and idea control masquerading as "community standards," and the use of algorithms and/or outright censorship that filters content and information based upon what the management of social media websites deem legitimate or "relevant" to the viewer. Through censorship and information culling, they can (much like the media) influence the beliefs and decisions of their users, and affect the outcome of things like elections through extension for example. And if you think I'm being hyperbolic, I'm not.
And incidents like this, along with where this is all going, became obvious to me long ago. The prevalence of social media use has provided subversives a means to systemically induce socio-political change on a level perhaps never seen before. Those who control it, and the state have clearly figured that out, and increasingly seek to use it for their own nefarious purposes. As such it has become a direct threat to the freedom of speech, "expression," and the "democratic" ideals leftists so claim to love. I can easily foresee a future in which Google searches for America's Founding documents return no, or highly censored and/or editorialized results, and posting their image or "unapproved" excerpts from such can get one banned from social media or worse.
"Websites like this will be the very things used to jail we dissenters in the future. They (our posts) shall be cited as evidence of our treason against the Socialist party and state." - Me, June 14, 2016.So, I still believe what I said years ago. I still believe websites like Facebook are ideal platforms for connecting with people you don't see on a regular basis; provided you use it for nothing more than that. But over the years I've come to see the far less obvious, and far more insidious, other purpose it serves. A system of mass social engineering that through speech and thought conditioning, information culling, and punishment of dissidents will achieve more effective control of the masses.
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