Category: Internet controversy

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First Amendment rights Internet controversy social media

Will Elon Liberate Tweeting?

Elon Musk

Persons who skip social media or who spend their time on Twitter and Facebook discussing lunch or the weather may not realize how anti-speech such big-tech forums have become.

If you disagree about what’s better for breakfast, eggs or oatmeal, no problem.

But despite their putative pretense of providing open forums, the dominant social-media companies routinely ban discussion of touchy subjects like Hunter Biden laptops, pandemics, and and the politics of race and gender. As the satire site Babylon Bee discovered, even calling a man a man, apparently quite a controversial observation, can get you in hot water with Twitter censors.

We have ways of combatting the censorship. One is using alternative platforms that do regard open discussion as a value. Another is becoming a major stockholder and disrupting the anti-speech agenda from within.

Is this what Elon Musk is up to? Bee CEO Seth Dillon says that after Twitter suspended Babylon Bee for calling a man a man, Musk called him about the suspension and said that “he might need to buy Twitter.” 

Presumably in order to put a stop to such censorious shenanigans.

Now Elon Musk, who has 80.6 million followers on Twitter, has bought the company. Or rather, he has acquired a big stake in it, a 9.2 percent stake. This apparently makes him Twitter’s largest stockholder. Maybe we can dare to hope that he will eventually become the majority stockholder.

Good first step, Mr. Musk. 

Next? Get Twitter to remove the gags.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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We Hear a Rumble

Rumble, Dan Bongino

Build it and they will come. 

What’s the “it”?

Rumble.

And who’s the “they”? 

The superstars censored by YouTube.

Not just superstars and the censored, of course. Plenty of producers and viewers are migrating to Rumble simply because they’re sick of seeing discussion squelched on dogma-guarding platforms like Google’s YouTube.

But it sure is a boost for Rumble and the cause of open discussion on the interwebs when Dan Bongino, who had about 900,000 subscribers on YouTube when it booted him, has two million subscribers and counting on Rumble.

House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy joined Rumble late last year and in just a few months has acquired over 53,000 subscribers. Not Bongino level, but not bad.

Among others joining Rumble recently are Bitcoin Magazine, the financial news channel Benzinga, and Reason magazine.

Fast-growing Rumble boasts of an “independent infrastructure designed to be immune to cancel culture” and a mission “to restore the Internet to its roots by making it free and open once again.”

That’s the opposite attitude and ambition of the big-tech hall monitors, constantly thumping their chests about how efficiently they’re censoring “misinformation.” (Good thing these people aren’t in charge of water-cooler chit-chat.)

The growing success of Rumble and other alternatives shows we’re not forever stuck with Google, Twitter, Facebook, et al. even if we’re stuck with their censorship.

This is Common Sense. I’m —

Oops. Almost forgot to mention that This Week in Common Sense is on Rumble too. Drop by, sign up, and chat with us in the comments. We’ll even let you disagree.

— Paul Jacob.

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This Is Just Huge

Dr. John Campbell, covid, treatments

“Why isn’t this in the newspapers?” 

That’s what Dr. John Campbell asked on his YouTube channel yesterday, reviewing several studies of ivermectin as an agent in the fight against COVID-19 — but directly regarding the results of research out of Brazil. It was an impressive large-number study, in which the researchers invited the whole population of Itajaí to participate, with 159,561 included in the analysis: 113,845 regular users of ivermectin and 45,716 non-users. 

“Seventy percent reduction in mortality in this study” of those who took a very “tiny dosage of ivermectin every fortnight, acting as a prophylaxis” over those did not. “I mean, this is just huge!”

Dr. Campbell, who has been a voice of calm science during the pandemic, goes on to say that “It’s almost as if information has been deliberately suppressed throughout the pandemic, to be quite honest.” With a wry look, he went on to say “No one’s saying that’s true, of course, but it’s almost like that.” 

Droll.

But non-ironically, he insists the evidence is “powerful, present, and overwhelming.” 

“Seventy percent,” he marvels, “how do you argue with a number like that? It’s a very, very high number.”

And the decrease in hospitalization was 67 percent.

All in all, the study found less infection, fewer hospitalizations, and an astoundingly lower death rate in the ivermectin group.

Earlier in the video, the doctor considered another study, comparing the cheap anti-parasitic to the far more expensive remdesivir, a Fauci-pushed Gilead Sciences anti-viral, with similar results.

It’s “almost as if” the expert class that spurned ivermectin doesn’t care if people die.

No one’s saying that, but. . . .

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

The studies:

Kerr L, Cadegiani F A, Baldi F, et al. (January 15, 2022) “Ivermectin Prophylaxis Used for COVID-19: A Citywide, Prospective, Observational Study of 223,128 Subjects Using Propensity Score Matching.” Cureus 14(1): e21272. doi:10.7759/cureus.21272.

I. Efimenko, S. Nackeeran, S. Jabori, J.A. Gonzalez Zamora, S. Danker, D.Singh, “Treatment with Ivermectin Is Associated with Decreased Mortality in COVID-19 Patients: Analysis of a National Federated Database.” International Journal of Infectious Diseases 116 (2022) S1–S130.

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international affairs Internet controversy social media

Starlink to Ukraine

Elon Musk, Starlink, Ukraine

Twitter’s policy of spasmodically censoring tweets and banning accounts, often without pausing to ponder what they are doing, has had at least one baleful effect in Ukraine. 

Last Wednesday, Twitter said it had “erred when it deleted about a dozen accounts that were posting information about Russian troop movements.” Obviously, the Russian invaders already know about their own troop movements. Losing this info could only hurt the people in Ukraine trying to defend themselves or run for their lives.

Innocent error? Anyway, Twitter said, in effect, “Our bad” and that it was now “proactively reinstating” affected accounts.

On the plus side, though, Ukraine official Mykhailo Federov was able to use Twitter to ask Elon Musk for help when the Russian assault knocked out the Internet in parts of the country.

“@elonmusk, while you try to colonize Mars,” Federov tweeted, “Russia try to occupy Ukraine! While your rockets successfully land from space — Russian rockets attack Ukrainian civil people! We ask you to provide Ukraine with Starlink stations. . . .”

That’s one way to get around the secretary barrier. And it worked.

“Starlink service is now active in Ukraine. More terminals en route,” was Musk’s tweet-response last Saturday.

Starlink satellites provides Internet access from space. No cables or optic fiber needed. Nothing for saboteurs to snip.

Good thinking, Mr. Federov. Thank you for the unreliably available platform, Twitter. Thank you, Elon Musk, for answering Ukraine’s cry for help and doing so as swiftly as possible.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Ron Paul vs. Fauci, YouTube vs. You

Ron Paul, Fauci, Covid, censorship, free speech, 1st Amendment

It’s new news but also, unfortunately, old news.

Tech-giant providers of forums for public discussion keep banning discussion of the issues of the day. The latest victim: Ron Paul, medical doctor, former congressman and presidential candidate, father of U.S. Senator Rand Paul.

Alphabet/Google/YouTube has pulled a video from Dr. Paul’s YouTube channel in which he criticized Fauci for, among other things, reversing his advice about wearing masks to combat COVID-19. YouTube warns of further suppression if this kind of thing (debate, I guess) continues. You can still watch the video, since there are competitors to YouTube (and we hope there will be many more). SoundCloud has it.

Paul linked to an image of the YouTube communiqué. “Your content was removed due to a violation of our Community Guidelines. . . . Medical misinformation.”

“If this happens again,” Paul’s channel will be hobbled for a week.

And if even then he still speaks freely, like any red-blooded American would? Still more sanctions, presumably.

Alas, there are many examples of these obnoxious policies.

We’ve recently complained about YouTube’s removal of a Mises Institute talk — once again, for failure to follow the pandemic panic party line. We’ve also complained about how WordPress buzz-sawed The Conservative Treehouse blog for nebulous violations of policy, violations suddenly discovered after years of hosting the blog.

We could go on. We probably will. Like the proverbial “broken record.” 

When’re we gonna stop?

Well, right after the tech giants stop their accelerating efforts to suppress debate.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Google Gag Reflex

John Stuart Mill, Google

Maybe it’s an honor when big-tech companies gag you. Maybe you’re doing something right.

Google-owned YouTube has yanked a Mises Institute talk by Tom Woods (“The COVID Cult”) from the Institute’s YouTube channel for challenging orthodox views of the pandemic. Google is also threatening the Mises Institute with further sanctions if the Institute’s YouTube channel sponsors further prohibited discourse.

In response, Mises Institute President Jeff Deist observes that Google and other big-tech firms have become de facto extensions of the state, “governmentalities . . . committed to ideological service. . . .”

To fight back, he says, we must “build our own platforms.” YouTube alternatives include Bitchute and Odysee, which still host the forbidden talk.

In On Liberty, John Stuart Mill argued that there’s a big difference “between presuming an opinion to be true, because, with every opportunity for contesting it, it has not been refuted, and assuming its truth for the purpose of not permitting its refutation. Complete liberty of contradicting and disproving our opinion, is the very condition which justifies us in assuming its truth for purposes of action; and on no other terms can a being with human faculties have any rational assurance of being right.”

Not every word of this passage is incontestable, but Mill had a point. If Google is so sure it is so right about COVID-19 policy and Woods so wrong, why try to kill an “opportunity for contesting” Google’s view?

Maybe Google’s “assurance of being right” is not so rational.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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