Category: social media

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ideological culture social media

Left-Winged Wikipedia

Wikipedia, socialism, neutrality

Wikipedia — the free online, once freely editable encyclopedia — started out upholding a principle about “neutrality.”

According to Wikipedia, this means that Wikipedia content “must be written from a neutral point of view (NPOV) . . . representing fairly, proportionately, and, as far as possible, without editorial bias, all the significant views that have been published by reliable sources on a topic.”

NPOV isn’t the same as objectivity, which is about getting at the truth by honest observation and logic, not primarily by balancing viewpoints about what’s true. But if good objective work by “reliable sources” has been done about a subject, Wikipedia’s neutrality standard requires that both the sludge and the good work be included. 

Somebody new to the subject has a fighting chance to be steered in the right direction.

NPOV still guides many Wikipedia articles where it is not really necessary, articles about elms and carburetors. The standard is now often ignored, however, in articles about controversial subjects. Like politics. Or socialism.

As I write, Wikipedia’s article on socialism mentions the kill list of “suspected high-ranking Communists” drawn up by Indonesia’s Suharto but not the many millions slaughtered under the commie-socialist regimes of the Soviet Union, China, Cuba, et al. Critiques of socialism are barely touched on. No NPOV here.

Such agitprop is guarded by non-neutral left-wing Wikipedia editors. Britannica is one alternative. Conservapedia was launched in 2006 as “a conservative, family-friendly Wiki encyclopedia,” and appears to be going strong. Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger, harshly critical of Wikipedia’s centralized propagandistic turn, is developing an alternative called Encylosphere.

It’s even mentioned in Wikipedia.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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partisanship social media

Another Comedian Breaks Free

Sarah Silverman

Comedian Sarah Silverman, who has famously lent no small part of her cachet to the progressive cause, supporting Senator Bernie Sanders in both of his Democratic presidential runs, is now ditching the Democratic Party.

Her complaint isn’t that the party stiffed her candidate twice, first when the Democratic National Committee stabbed Bernie in the back for Hillary and next when it orchestrated ingenious maneuvers to gain the nomination (and then the presidency) for the tepid (and tepidly supported) Joe Biden.

I have argued before that Democrat insiders’ treatment of Sanders was deeply anti-democratic. But no, Ms. Silverman directs her ire against “the absolutist-ness of the party,” as she put it the other day on Instagram. “It’s so . . . elitist. You know, for something called ‘progressive,’ it allows for zero progress.”* Telling, perhaps, that Ms. Silverman emphasizes “progressive” and not “democratic,” as if it were named “The Progressive Party.”

Silverman specifically called attention not only to progressives’ unwillingness to compromise, but also to the it-takes-two-to-tango divide: “You know, Republicans might hear an idea that they would totally agree with, but, if it comes from AOC then they hate it.” She admitted that the same thing applied to her.

No wonder, then, that she does not “want to be associated with any party anymore,” complaining about “too much baggage.”

But she’s objecting to her fellow progressives’ anti-free speech agenda, too, characterizing it as “righteousness porn.”

Silverman, who has a special named Jesus Is Magic and is famous for her rape jokes, has herself felt the sting of cancel culture and would be a natural proponent of principled free speech.

But that is not a progressive cause, it is a very old-fashioned liberal one.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* An f-bomb has been elided in the quotation from Ms. Silverman.

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First Amendment rights social media

Tracking Big-Tech Attacks

Reclaim the Net

Instagram is further restricting what users may say in direct messages, and the company will eject any user who utters hate speech. Instagram will also provide information about account holders to UK police.

But what is hate speech? 

Nasty utterances that we’d all agree are hateful. Sure. But it also appears to be disagreeing with someone about “gender identity” or supporting Melania Trump. In other words, “hate speech” is whatever offends the authoritarian sensibilities of whoever operates the delete-account button at the social-media giants.

A lot of this has been happening lately.

YouTube has deleted the YouTube channel of LifeSiteNews, a Christian news outlet. 

YouTube and Facebook have banned a documentary about pandemic policies called “Planet Lockdown,” and GoFundMe has cancelled a fundraising campaign for the film.

China will start accrediting reporters based on their social media histories, and it will penalize companies who employ unaccredited reporters. “Citizen journalists” (people with cell phones) will also have to be accredited.

Every day, tyrannical governments and their private-sector allies — the big-tech hall monitors now dropping all pretense of providing neutral forums — act to smother discussion and dissent on the net. In self-defense, we need to know about these anti-speech efforts. But keeping track is a big job. 

Fortunately, ReclaimTheNet is doing this big job for us. Its regular e-letter (subscribe here) reprints the latest stories published on their website. 

This job has to be outsourced, as far as I am concerned. Were I to report on all of it here, I wouldn’t be able to talk about anything else.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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social media

Fired for Being on Parler

censorship

Is the desire to speak freely a bad thing?

In tweets now “protected” from public view, Jennifer De Chiara, president of Jennifer De Chiara Literary Agency, professed distress upon learning “that one of our agents has been using the social media platforms Gab and Parler. We do not condone this activity.”

Her agency, she added, works “to ensure a voice of unity, equality, and one that is on the side of social justice.” So “Colleen Oefelein is no longer an agent at The Jennifer De Chiara Literary Agency.”

This announcement came some weeks after Oefelein reported (on Twitter) that she’s “now also posting on Parler. It’s a great platform with no censorship!”

Tech giants like Twitter and Facebook have become increasingly brazen about banning users for uttering wrongthink. Hence the appeal of pro-free-speech alternatives like Parler and Gab.

De Chiara and Oefelein certainly disagree on the exact reason for the firing. Oefelein says it was for being “a Christian and a conservative.”

Of course, their two explanations are not mutually contradictory.

Anyway, it is significant that De Chiara explains the firing by specifically citing Oefelein’s use as such of a pro-free-speech platform. Also significant is that her explanation includes nothing to the effect that Oefelein expressed anything even so much as politically incorrect . . . or, let’s note, that she was bad at her job.

One apt response to deplatforming is shunning, the boycott of (in this case) the Jennifer De Chiara Literary Agency. If you are an author or agent working with the agency and you disapprove of such retaliation against the desire to speak freely, find another agency.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Our Info War

Michael Rectenwald

“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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ideological culture responsibility social media

Realtor Group Gag

censorship, oppression, flag

The U.S. President, along with his most influential followers, has been banned from Twitter and from other social media while also facing yet another impeachment effort.

So who cares whether some silly realtor group imposes an anti-“hate speech” code on members?

Us. 

We had better care.

Why?

Bureaucrats and politicians don’t act alone. 

They are empowered by individuals who consent to, cheer for, do whatever they can to promote and enable repression. And by all the private organizations and institutions who do the same kind of enabling of repression.

The “hate speech” ban just imposed by the National Association of Realtors on its members to govern their conduct 24/7 (a “blacklisting,” says Reason’s Eugene Volokh) could impose fines up to $15,000 for violations. (I assume NAR would be unable to collect from members who don’t stick around to pay.) 

The goal is to make at least the most submissive members struggle never to say anything that could offend some anti-speech client.

If you are a realtor with NAR: quit. Don’t cooperate. Don’t fund and don’t sanction these aspiring tyrants. You can find client leads another way. Join a competing organization that doesn’t ban speech. Or work with other realtors to form one.

Governments do not tyrannize in a social and cultural vacuum. 

Do we want a world in which everyone who values freedom is silent — even “voluntarily” — for fear of “hatefully” offending the infinitely tender sensibilities of those who hate freedom of speech and any fundamental disagreement?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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