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How I’m Responding to Facebook and Twitter Censorship
The previously clandestine and now quite overt censoring of conservative voices on Facebook, Twitter, and Google Platforms has now reached dangerous levels. This is not just about Trump. Social media is critical to modern political discourse. The censorship must be resisted. That means targeting profitability, and that means boycotts. But I won’t cut off my nose to spite my face.
I will continue to use these platforms in the short term while taking the following measures to abandon them as soon as it is practical.
1. To the greatest extent possible, I will try to post nearly exclusively on Parler and MeWe
2. I will post on Twitter and Facebook only links to those Parler and MeWe posts
3. You are not forced to join those sites to view my posts, but I hope once you are on the sites reading my stuff, you will take the opportunity to join those communities. Please join/follow/friend me when you get there.
4. Eventually, once those alternative communities have reached the critical mass needed to function as effectively as Twitter and Facebook once did, I will abandon those legacy services entirely. Ironically, with their recent actions, those legacy companies may have accelerated the realization of that network effect functionality.
In the meantime, here is what else I am doing:
To the extent possible, I am viewing my favorite video podcasts on Rumble instead of YouTube. They don’t censor political speech and their terms are financially much more appealing for content creators. Also, they have plans to incorporate live streaming in the new year.
I have abandoned Google as my search engine on all platforms. I use Duck Duck Go
I am researching my options for switching email providers to jettison G-Mail. Looking at Protonmail which offers end to end encryption. They don’t mine your emails for data about you to sell. Even if privacy isn’t your primary concern, you’ll be incrementally robbing Google of a source of revenue.
I’m @Exaeroman at Parler https://parler.com/profile/Exaeroman/posts
I’m Jesse McVay at MeWe https://mewe.com/i/jessemcvay
https://Rumble.com https://rumble.com
https://DuckDuckGo.com https://duckduckgo.com
https://Protonmail.com https://protonmail.com
Feel free to comment on this post if you have other suggestions for alternative social media platforms.
If you agree with this approach to taking back Social Media Freedom, please share and ReTweet (Echo) this post.
Published in General
Making your links clickable:
I’m @Exaeroman at Parler https://parler.com/profile/Exaeroman/posts
I’m Jesse McVay at MeWe https://mewe.com/i/jessemcvay
https://Rumble.com https://Rumble.com
https://DuckDuckGo.com https://DuckDuckGo.com
https://Protonmail.com https://Protonmail.com
Now I’ll go follow you.
I’ve been using ProtonMail for over a year now and have been very pleased with it. I also use their VPN.
I checked. They do support POP3 and IMAP. And they can support my own domain name. I’ve become nervous about having so much important stuff being hosted on my hostgator account. Problem is I have two mail names addresses (john.gorentz@spokesrider.com and john.gorentz@reticulator.com) that are important to me, and I’d have to move both which would cost about 100 euros/year. That’s less than I’m paying to hostgator each year, but I’d still need to keep my hostgator account (or something similar) for other purposes.
I wish they also supported listserv-type email lists, though that would probably be at an extra cost. If they had a good package that included that service, I’d go ASAP. I may go anyway.
You’d better start leaving Twitter soon. It took me about a month. Every time I got to the “cancel membership” option, I got the message “Sorry, that function is currently not available”
Wow.
A bit off-topic, but will their VPN allow one to watch sports blacked out in one’s area?
When I retired, I cancelled my work-based Twitter account. But they keep telling me by email (I will have my work- based email forever) about Tweets they think I should look at, and they don’t honor my attempts to get off their stupid email list. I’ve been thinking I should cause them some legal consequences for that.
This is an excellent post. You’ve inspired me to do the same.
I’ve also used ProtonMail for about a year, and have yet to receive ONE spam email. (I’m using the free version, so I do have to empty the trash once in a while.) I use their VPN as well. Recommended.
How does protonmail make money?
EDIT: It looks like they have a limited feature free version and then you pay a few bucks for a more advanced version. Fair enough.
Thank you for sharing this.
You can choose which country you want to connect to, so that might help.
Fortunately, I have never used either Facebook or Twitter. I gave up my Gmail account last year, and always use DuckDuckGo for search now. I will continue to post on my personal blog, RushBabe49.com, and I have had no issues with WordPress or Automattic censoring me there. As always, I love to get new Ricochet followers on my blog. I will be incendiary over there. I am doing a series called Annals of Tyranny, and I will be doing Part III today. I also accept guest writers from Ricochet-when I see a post that I especially like, I ask the member if I can copy it over to RushBabe49.com with attribution. For email, I use my Comcast.net accounts, and I have multiple accounts. I may decide to check out ProtonMail if I have any issues with Comcast, which is my ISP.
I have not joined Parler yet, but I did download the app last night; Ray tells me that it is now gone from the App Store.
I use Gmail for spam and stuff I don’t read. It is about 250,000 emails now. I never joined Twitter. I joined Parler and MeWe about a month ago and have begun to transition family to MeWe.
Remember that the App is not necessary. IPhones have Safari which allows logging into MeWe and Parler.
I’ve been on Protonmail (paid) for about a year and happy with it. Now going through my gmail traffic for the last few months to move the last few accounts and contacts that I care about over there. Will be looking into their VPN as well.
Switched to duckduckgo from google even earlier. G used to be a better search engine, but since they’ve started biasing and censoring the results it can’t be trusted.
Was never on Twitter or Facebook – having spent considerable time in Silicon Valley, their behavior surprises me not at all. I’ve been on Gab since near the beginning, though not much posting. They are struggling with user load right now. Worth supporting, but be ready to exercise the ‘block’ option, there are all too many actual racists and anti-Semites over there (or at least convincing trolls/LARPers).
I’ll be leaving this platform at the end of the month, since it’s apparently no longer interested in open conversation. Checking out the lobster place and a few others.
ETA: I just switched one of my two regular computers to Brave from Firefox, and will do the other after a bit of familiarization time.
I signed up for the lobster place earlier this week. I’m there under my initials (CT).
I checked out the VPN levels. Looks like one had to get the $8/month plan to “access blocked sites.” Think I’ll find another tool for that.
Did get an email account there though.
One thing you can do: *Selectively* invite real-world & FB friends to participate in blogs that you think are worthwhile. Including this one, of course. There are a lot of people who really don’t understand that such things as blogs exist.
They are private platforms and free to do as they wish, it is not censorship. If you cannot adhere to the rules, go somewhere else.
And stop whining.
The smug is strong with this one.
Its gone from the app store. But this morning I typed ‘parler’ into google search and the download was the third link down.
Michael Malice pointed out yesterday, that having everything on one platform is crazy. We dont have one streaming service, we dont have one tv station, but we expect to have all our stuff go through 3 platforms.
I still have my gmail account for a bunch of stuff. But, I will be weaning off of it. Gmail made itself very convenient, which is one reason all 3 of these things became influential. But personally I predict in 5 years, the idea of Big Three Tech giants, will be as likely, as the Big 3 Automotive companies, Big 3 Newspapers and Big 3 TV networks.
Just announced that Amazon is cancelling its hosting services for Parler. They (Parler) may also do some hosting elsewhere, but they may have to install and run their own ‘bare metal’ servers to continue is operation.
I believe that in labor law, something like this would be called a Secondary Boycott.
1. The ACLU defining censorship: “Censorship, the suppression of words, images, or ideas that are “offensive,” happens whenever some people succeed in imposing their personal political or moral values on others. Censorship can be carried out by the government as well as private pressure groups.” You are confusing censorship with the First Amendment.
2. The whole point of the post was going somewhere else.
3. There isn’t a whine in the post or any of the comments.
From Wikipedia.
“
Censorship is the suppression of speech, public communication, or other information, on the basis that such material is considered objectionable, harmful, sensitive, or “inconvenient.”[2][3][4] Censorship can be conducted by governments,[5] private institutions, and other controlling bodies.
Governments[5] and private organizations may engage in censorship. Other groups or institutions may propose and petition for censorship.[6] When an individual such as an author or other creator engages in censorship of their own works or speech, it is referred to as self-censorship. General censorship occurs in a variety of different media, including speech, books, music, films, and other arts, the press, radio, television, and the Internet for a variety of claimed reasons including national security, to control obscenity, child pornography, and hate speech, to protect children or other vulnerable groups, to promote or restrict political or religious views, and to prevent slander and libel.
Direct censorship may or may not be legal, depending on”
–So it is engaging in censorship by the technical meaning of the term. Thanks for playing. And remember knowing is half the battle.
?
It is censorship, but it is not government censorship in a strict sense. And you have no business telling people to stop whining. If Big Tech has the right to impose rules that are smokescreens for actions that bear no relation to their rules, we have the right to whine about it and get it stopped.
When our country was founded we had a system of “states rights” that limited what the federal government could do about things that happened within a state. But slaveholders pushed their luck and treated people in ways that just could not be tolerated, especially when the impact couldn’t be confined to what happened within a state. A byproduct was a great civil war, and that was the deserved and unfortunate end of states rights.
We supposedly still have a system in which private companies can do what they want within the confines of their own companies. But now they are pushing their luck and treating people in ways that will not be tolerated, especially when they try to control the behavior of their competitors and force them to honor their own standards of censorship. If they don’t back off and allow a healthy competition, that will be the deserved and unfortunate end of the right of private social media companies to censor what happens on their own platforms.
Until the next iOS update
Samizdat in the 21st century might be interesting.
Hotel Twitter. “You can check in any time you please, but you can never leave.”