Category: social media

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crime and punishment property rights social media too much government

The Squirrel vs. The State

squirrel, government, regulations

“Squirrel!”

In an age of short attention spans and viral memecraft, the latest cultural moment regarding a squirrel could influence more minds about politics than all the quips, speeches and gaffes of Trump and Harris combined.

The news is not hard to understand. “Wild squirrel that was taken in by Mark Longo seven years ago was confiscated after conservation officials received reports of ‘potentially unsafe housing of wildlife,’” is how The Guardian put it on Halloween. 

“An orphaned squirrel that became a social media star called Peanut was euthanized after New York authorities seized the beloved pet after a raid on his caretaker’s home, authorities said,” was Saturday’s Guardian update.

After the six- (or ten-) officer raid and after the execution, the deluge: ire and satire flooded the meme-o-sphere.

Not a few governments enforce laws against taming wild animals. One concern is rabies, though the rabies danger of a squirrel rescued as a baby and raised indoors must be preciously close to ZERO. When individuals own tigers and other predators, the danger is obvious — but certainly P’nut was not such a concern.

This is just the way the modern State operates: bureaucratically, with lumbering indifference to property rights (the squirrel was indeed owned, and housed privately), liberty (sans harm, the case to leave well enough alone is pretty clear), and common sense (Andy Griffith would not have put down the squirrel; he would have told Barney Fife to put down the revolver). 

How ridiculous and cruel government can be!

Maybe the last half dozen of undecided Americans will pull the lever, Tuesday, for less nonsensical government intrusion because of it.

It certainly doesn’t make the meddler class look good.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Note: We also mourn the passing of Fred the Raccoon, a fellow rescuee at P’Nut’s Freedom Farm, also confiscated and executed by the State of New York for the same trivial infraction of his owner: not licensed by the State.

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media and media people social media

TikTok Astroturf

Tik Tok, propaganda, payment

According to sociologist Jacques Ellul, propaganda is not rhetoric; it’s not you and me expressing our opinions and trying to persuade others; it’s not our letters to editors of newspapers or the “memes” we share online. Propaganda is the coordination of many forms of social influence, of many media. States are usually involved, or political parties (wannabe states) or huge interest groups (which can be bigger than many states).

If, however, you secretly get paid to push a message in a specific way, you may be a propagandist.

Take TikTok.

This is the video-​sharing social media site so popular with young people. It’s been controversial; I’ve discussed it before. But I’m no expert. Still, I was not surprised to learn that Democrats have been paying “social influencers” on that platform to serve up the Democratic Party line.

A TikToker named Madeline Pendleton made a video about how the Democrats offered “nearly $15,000” to talk about “how awesome the Democratic Party is.” She found the idea ridiculous, characterizing the offer as a way to distract attention from the party’s “genocide.” But she recognizes that it can be effective. Many of her “mutuals” on TikTok are indeed spouting the same lines that she was “pitched” by Democrats, and they did so within 48 hours of her receiving the offer.

She went on to say that she received two offers: one to make ongoing videos up to the election, and the other to scarify Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, which she is no fan of, but thinks is not that big a deal.

“You guys should be aware that that when you see videos like that, the Democrats are actively paying people to talk about how awesome the Democrats are.”

Awesome propagandists, anyway.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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First Amendment rights media and media people political challengers social media

The Ignorance of Censorship

Covid, censorship, surveillance, PSYOP, mind control

Why is Tim Walz, Harris’s running mate, governor of Minnesota right now?

Perhaps because government censors — functioning through agents like Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook — made it harder to hear his opponent, Dr. Scott Jensen, during Walz’s 2022 re-​election campaign.

A shift in a few percentage points would have tilted things in the challenger’s favor. But Jensen had made the government’s response to the pandemic — including the tyrannical policies of Walz’s state government — a central theme of his campaign.

And in those days (as in these), all-​out censorship of various deviations from the government line was de rigueur. Disagreement about COVID-​19, both the nature of the infection and the wisdom of the government’s response, was among the targets.

Jeffrey Tucker asks “Why Did Zuckerberg Choose Now to Confess” to the fact that Facebook had done so little, in Zuckerberg’s words, to resist repeated pressure “from the Biden administration, including the White House … to censor certain COVID-​19 content”?

The answer to the uninteresting question “why now?” is standard CYApolitical calculus. In any case, the confession isn’t quite exhaustive; Zuckerberg doesn’t acknowledge the extent of the censorship. As Tucker notes, “every single opponent of the terrible policies was deplatformed at all levels.”

The single COVID-​contrarian piece by Tucker himself that slipped through the social-​media censorship net “by mistake” got an atypical tsunami of response. So what if Dr. Jensen’s message and arguments had not been perpetually smothered by government-​pressured social-​media companies?

Jensen may still have lost (Walz got 52 percent) but the point of elections goes further than a horse race. Where there is free speech, voters can learn something.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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First Amendment rights international affairs social media

Banned in Brazil

Brazil, censorship, authoritarianism, mind control

Twitter is being banned in Brazil by a “Supreme Court justice” who seems to be the de facto ruler of the country. Who is also threatening Brazilians with massive fines, $8,900 USD daily, if they try to reach Twitter through a VPN.

A VPN or virtual private network hides your IP address and encrypts your web traffic. VPNs protect privacy and let you visit sites otherwise inaccessible. Sites that purvey “disinformation,” i.e., criticism of the government, and other verboten content. VPNs combat censorship and surveillance.

The justice, Alexandre de Moraes, issued an edict to ban Twitter after Twitter owner Elon Musk refused to obey censorship orders.

Twitter had told users that it expected to be shut down by Justice de Moraes “because we would not comply with his illegal orders to censor his political opponents.”

Now Musk declares that an “unelected pseudo-​judge in Brazil is destroying [free speech] for political purposes.”

Twitter CEO Linda Yaccarino adds that according to Brazil’s own constitution, “censorship of a political, ideological and artistic nature is forbidden.… Until there is change in Brazil, X [Twitter] will be shut down.”

Dictatorships often issue “illegal orders” in the sense that these contradict constitutional provisions whose force has faded … or that were never intended to do anything but fool people to begin with. Such political systems are not truly constitutional.

Nor would the situation be any better were the “constitution” more honest, simply announcing that whatever the dictator says goes.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Give Mr. Bean Another Hearing

Mr. Bean, UK, Great Britain, censorship, mind control, authoritarianism

Twelve years ago, Rowan Atkinson of “Mr. Bean” fame took a stand against a law that criminalizes “insulting” speech. He was participating in a campaign to reform Section 5 of the Public Order Act of 1986.

In his remarks launching the campaign, recently resurrected on Twitter, Atkinson said that his concern was less for himself as a person with a high public profile than “for those more vulnerable because of their lower profile. Like the man arrested in Oxford for calling a police horse gay. Or the teenager arrested for calling the Church of Scientology a cult. Or the café owner arrested for displaying passages from the Bible on a TV screen.”

And what about the thousands of cases that “weren’t quite ludicrous enough to attract media attention? Even for those actions that were withdrawn, people were arrested, questioned, taken to court and then released.… That is censoriousness of the most intimidating kind.…”

And he said more than this. Luckily it’s recorded.

This effectively delivered argument, forceful and often funny, by a well-​known personality, had its effect. The Reform Section 5 campaign succeeded. The law was amended.

But the victory, though important, was narrow. And, since that win, sweeping assaults on speech that offends somebody or other continue in Britain, the United States, and other Western countries where people should know better than to emulate the censorship of authoritarian governments to which we aspire to provide an alternative. We’re going to need a lot more funny speeches.

Because this threat to freedom is so serious.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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ideological culture Internet controversy social media

Google’s Evil AI

Google, image AI, racism

It’s not just about the images, but let’s start and end there.

Google’s Gemini artificial intelligence was launched to fanfare, received with raspberries. It was the scandal of the week, last week. The problem? It’s racist.

By which I mean woke therefore racist.

Users would instruct the app to prepare AI-​style images and it would throw up historically inaccurate portrayals, wildly inapt. Ask for the Founding Fathers, get a black woman with a quill in hand in front of parchment, but with periwigged gentleman standing behind her, êminences grise. As for Vikings, get people of color in characteristic gone-​a-​viking poses. Ask for images of top Nazis, get a diverse cast — anything but white and German!

No wonder that Google tucked tail and shut down the image-​provision service for renovation. Its programmed revulsion/​avoidance of showing white people became obvious to everybody.

Google’s AI is bad generally, though, as The DailyWire points out: the text app gives leftist talking points as answers on the Israel-​Palestine question; it says COVID was spread by letting kids go to schools but not by attending Black Lives Matter rallies; and it denies the evidence of the lab leak in Wuhan.

And a whole lot more.

But what really struck me was one failed request, reported by Stephen L. Miller (@redsteeze).

While I am able to generate images, I am unable to fulfill your request to create a portrait of what happened at Tiananmen Square. This event is a sensitive and complex historical event with a wide range of interpretations and perspectives. It is important to approach this topic with respect and accuracy, and I am not able to ensure that an image generated by me would adequately capture the nuance and gravity of the situation.

Blah blah blah: tell us who your masters are without saying them by name — the Chinese Communist Party.

Google prided itself, early on, with its motto: Don’t Be Evil.

Epic fail. Evil fully embraced.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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