Tag: censorship

TikTok Dox War

Merriam-Webster says that to “dox” is “to publicly identify or publish private information about (someone) especially as a form of punishment or revenge.”

Here is a sentence to illustrate the usage: The person behind the popular Twitter account “Libs of TikTok” — featuring video clips of left-wingers talking about their crazy agendas, thereby confirming the crazy left-wing agendas that mainstream media often pretend don’t exist — has been doxxed by the Washington Post.

Well, the doxxer, Taylor Lorenz — the notorious and teary-eyed reporter on the social media beat — did not act alone. At least one Post editor must have okayed her action.

Not so long ago, Lorenz claimed to oppose online “harassment” (criticism), lamenting that she was a victim of it in consequence of her brave work as a left-wing smear artist. But then, in a smear-laden Post column, she revealed the identity of the hitherto anonymous publisher of Libs of Tik Tok, even including a link to private information about her day job.

The link has since been deleted.

For now, Libs of Tik Tok, bane of progressives for heretically showcasing their very own words, is still on Twitter. (Although the publisher suspects that it’s “a matter of time before I get suspended.”)

The other good news is that even if the LoTT creator loses her nine-to-five job as a result of being Post-doxxed, she’s now got another remunerative position. Babylon Bee CEO Seth Dillon says he’s made a deal with her “that will turn her heroic, high-risk work into a career.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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First Amendment rights free trade & free markets

Elon Musk Is Serious

Billionaire Tesla and SpaceX entrepreneur Elon Musk is showing the world how capitalism reforms wayward companies — like Twitter.

It is done from within the system.

By stock ownership.

Becoming Twitter’s top stockholder — right after Musk told the Babylon Bee he just might have to buy Twitter to reform it — surely demonstrates serious intent.

But Twitter honchos have stressed that the mere advent of Elon Musk portends no major changes, a hint of things not to come.

Moreover, a restriction on how many shares board members may purchase meant that had Musk joined Twitter’s board, he’d have been unable to ramp up the pressure for reform by becoming an even bigger stockholder.

So Musk chucked his original plan to join the board and decided, what the heck: If I do need to buy Twitter to fix its anti-speech policies, I better outright buy it. He has reportedly offered $43 billion.

He says: “I invested in Twitter as I believe in its potential to be the platform for free speech around the globe.” But he now realizes that the company in its current form will never be that platform.

“Twitter needs to be transformed as a private company.”

A week ago we asked, “Will Elon Liberate Tweeting?”

We’re still asking. Maybe the current owners love banning disagreement with themselves too much to give it up.

Someone should tell them that are worse things to sell out for than open discourse and freedom of speech.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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First Amendment rights Internet controversy social media

Will Elon Liberate Tweeting?

Post author By Editor
Post date April 7, 2022
5 Comments on Will Elon Liberate Tweeting?

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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Internet controversy social media

We Hear a Rumble

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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First Amendment rights ideological culture

Our Uncivil War

speech, 1st Amendment, freedom, censorship

The New York Times admits it: “America Has a Free Speech Problem.” But the March 18 editorial, while trying carefully to distinguish one kind of speech issue from another, fails to acknowledge the full extent of the problem.

The trouble, you guessed it, is partly a left versus right issue: “Many on the left refuse to acknowledge that cancel culture exists at all, believing that those who complain about it are offering cover for bigots to peddle hate speech,” which strikes me as a fairly accurate account. But the Times cannot help itself — the right must be made to seem worse. “Many on the right,” the editorial goes on, “for all their braying about cancel culture, have embraced an even more extreme version of censoriousness as a bulwark against a rapidly changing society, with laws that would ban books, stifle teachers and discourage open discussion in classrooms.”

Sans persuasive examples — the Times provides none — I reject this claim as a grave misunderstanding of current trends. What has been happening is not the banning of books, but the mere removal of them from public school libraries and/or curricula.

“Stifling teachers” is not a thing, really. Taxpayer-funded teachers have no more right to teach anything they want than taxpayer-funded police have the right to enforce whatever laws they want.

The multi-racial backlash against the left, most recently in Virginia, was a movement of parents upset over cultural Marxist indoctrination on racial issues … taking the place of quality education.

Something else the Times missed: the extent to which cancel culture has worked hand-in-hand with social media companies under the influence of partisans in Congress and the Deep State.

That being said, the Times does get something right: “When speech is stifled or when dissenters are shut out of public discourse, a society also loses its ability to resolve conflict, and it faces the risk of political violence.”

Yes, it’s a problem.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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First Amendment rights social media

Chirp Meets Buzz

The Babylon Bee won’t cooperate with Twitter’s censorship of the Babylon Bee.

When instructed to remove tweets in order to recover account access, people tend to comply.

Not always, but often.

Hard to blame them. But it does mean that Twitter gets away with all kinds of egregious censorship that the social media “platform” shouldn’t get away with.

The Bee’s latest sin? Bestowing upon HHS Assistant Secretary for Health Rachel Levine — who had just been dubbed a Woman of the Year by USA Today because Levine “identifies as” a woman — the title Man of the Year.

Twitter has locked the Babylon Bee out of its Twitter account.The platform literally “can’t take a joke.” And Twitter demands the Bee must delete the tweet to regain access.

“We’re not deleting anything,” says Bee CEO Seth Dillon. “If the cost of telling the truth is the loss of our Twitter account, then so be it.”

Dillon notes that account holders are not only expected to remove offending tweets but also to repentantly check a box to renounce the censored viewpoint. “You have to deny that you meant it.… They’re forcing you to grovel and adopt an ideological position that you don’t actually hold.”

The Babylon Bee is routinely assailed by Internet censors. Satire, parody, pastiche, lampoon, spoof, sarcasm, irony, etc. are all allegedly forms of “misinformation” and “hate speech,” thwarting of which is the rationalization du decade for stopping people from talking to each other.

In response, the Babylon Bee is thankfully taking a stand and, let’s hope and trust, won’t back down.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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