We Americans want to have our say, speak our piece — we do not wish to be gagged. No mystery to that. No puzzle. No strange, arcane, unexpected turn of our temper.
But that’s how it must seem to Nathan Bomey, author of “Parler, MeWe, Gab gain momentum as conservative social media alternatives in post-Trump age,” gracing the pages of USA Today.
“America’s crisis of political segregation — we increasingly don’t live alongside, associate with or even marry people who think differently from us — is increasingly leading conservatives to congregate together on social media outlets designed specifically for people who think like them.”
This is a passage of surpassing dumbness.
To pick one fundamental ideological divide at random: capitalist twitterers have never had any problem with posting tweets “alongside” socialist twitterers. The problem is the growing censorship of tweets that officials and employees at tech giants like Twitter, Facebook, and Google happened to dislike or disagree with for any reason.
This censorship was revved up during the recent election.
Bomey does mention claims of censorship by the persons being censored, but treats these as the ravings of “the extremist crowd.” He adds: “Experts on political polarization say [the rise of alternative social media] is a natural outgrowth of our divided culture.…”
Again: a major reason the alternatives to Twitter etc. are gaining such traction is the censorship. People are leaving the Big-Tech-sponsored discourse because they are being censored.
You don’t kick people out of the room and then scratch your head in wonderment, asking, “Gee willikers, why are you guys going away?”
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
N.B. I have Minds and Gab accounts, but do not use them. Should I start again? I just set up a MeWe account. What alternative social media apps do you use?
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7 replies on “The Latest Fake Mystery”
Have to check out Parler as well.
Censorship by any media will and must creat it’s own competition. The sad part is that if the progressives and the conservatives are segregated such leads to further isolation and less intermixing of opinion and proposed solutions.
Perhaps an alternative is to stop the pseudonyms and have everyone post be identifiable and “own” their speech. That is, in my estimation, the best control as everyone knows that although you are free to speak there may well be ramifications which result from doing so.
One argument against putting your own name on a post is the cancel culture. And how do you tell one “John Smith” from another?
Free speech should not be punished, as it has been by employers who search social media for your political views and anything you may have said as a teenager. The evidence may be anecdotal, but it’s hard to ignore. If journalists have no problem granting anonymity to their ‘sources’, surely the rest of us should have the same privilege.
I have avoided using social media all this time. Even if conservatives constitute a majority of Parler or MeWe users, I’d be willing to bet that liberal voices will not be silenced on these platforms. Time will tell.
A comment of mine, from a discussion of this piece elsewhere:
In the normal course of things, if one person uses a word to mean something it absolutely, positively, under no circumstances means, I assume that that person just accidentally grabbed the wrong word. I mean, it happens.
But a whole bunch of people yelling CENSORSHIP, over and over, to describe a behavior that absolutely, positively, under no circumstances conforms to the definition of that word, even though those people …
1) Used to know what the word meant;
2) Have access to numerous resources for finding out what it still means; and
3) Have been repeatedly informed that they’re abusing the language
… makes it difficult to give those people the benefit of doubt.
I know Paul Jacob. Paul Jacob is a friend of mine. And Paul Jacob fucking knows better than to pretend the behavior he’s describing is “censorship.”
To see the entire exchange in the thread TLK refers to (of which so far I’m the only other poster) see http://rationalreview.news-digests.com/archives/42461 . I disagree there with TLK’s angry reaction to the use of the C‑word in the context of this column.
As one, who has been shadowbanned on Facebook for the past three years, I understand , completely. Social media aren’t…