“Do not close your Facebook or Twitter accounts,” wrote Michael Rectenwald a few days ago.
But I already closed my Twitter!
“Do not give up the geography you have and the connections you’ve made within those spaces. Instead, subvert from within.”
Still, I never liked Twitter. It seems a poisonous atmosphere of too much snark, virtue signaling, mobbing, and worse.
“As of now, there are no alternatives. Parler will be shut down by Amazon within hours. It will also be shut out of Apple and Android vis-a-vis Apple Store and Google Play.”
I hopped on Parler, when it got attacked. With the outages, etc., it is impossible to use.
“Gab is a digital silo or ghetto that contains and isolates deviationism.”
And former leftist professor Rectenwald — author of the books Springtime for Snowflakes, The Google Archipelago, and Beyond Woke, as well as a novel, Thought Criminal — means “deviationism” in an entirely good way.
“MeWe has already succumbed to the oligarchical censors,” he informs.
“Instead, keep the beach heads that we have and spread out. Don’t give up the connections. We must retain the network of thought deviationism . . . . Read this article and you’ll understand why it’s not as simple as you think,” linking to a Daniel Greenfield essay on Frontpage, “Parler and the Problem of Escaping Internet Censorship” (January 8, 2021).
The problem is oligopoly, argues Greenfield, since five big corporations “control the mobile ecosystem and can shut down an app like Parler anytime they please. . . . an increasingly small interconnected network of companies . . . can act in concert to suppress anyone or anything they don’t like.”
And what role does the federal government play? It applies pressure by threats at the top end (Nancy Pelosi, et al.) and who-knows-what at the Deep End (the CIA and other intel agencies, which have working arrangements with all major tech companies, including Apple).
All the more reason for you to (ahem) SUBSCRIBE for email service on ThisIsCommonSense.org, if you haven’t already. Email is harder to control.
And we have a lot of work to do, to fight back.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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2 replies on “Our Info War”
1. It’s impossible for me to close Facebook and Twitter accounts, since I never had them to begin with.
2. How do you ‘subvert from within’ when these social media sites are shadow banning and even deleting your account and preventing you, a common person, from posting? They will not tolerate your (our) presence on their sacred (to them) sites.
3. One thing that disturbs me is that more and more conservative sites are discontinuing their user comments. (AT stopped today.) Even with the troll infestation, I have always looked to fellow readers for their opinions and insights.
4. Email may be harder to control but there’s no guarantee it will remain that way. The SJWs and Big Tech will do their best to limit it as well.
I just added Telegram to the list of my newsletter’s editions (web, email, Facebook, Twitter, Steemit, Minds, MeWe, Diaspora, and now Telegram).
I’m also considering moving my web hosting to Iceland, where they don’t do the US government’s bidding without a court case and where they don’t really care if someone doesn’t like your site as long as you pay up.
We haven’t had any BIG problems yet, but a few of our posts have been 86ed on Facebook for linking to content insufficiently reverent toward the COVID-19 scripture.
But I DO expect to continue posting to the big services until and unless they die or I’m stopped from doing so.