Interesting thread, and some interesting irony also. All those responses to Alex raised his eyeballs score dramatically. Which makes twitter a tad more valuable.
We could "defund" twitter by simply refusing to look at it. If everyone stopped using it, it'd die, Musk would be bummed (though I'm sure he's made money already), and something would either fill the demand, if there is one, or we'd all find other things to do.
BTW never twittered but have become a fan of substack. I like the variety of content and the mostly interesting discussion threads which are also mostly civil. Not a lot of name calling and litany repeating, which gets old quick.
Add Michael and Matt Taibi to your list of Stackers. I believed that their Bird problems were related to their stories on the Censorship Industrial Complex until I read this post. (Please note the irony of the Bird messing with the reporters of The Twitter Files.). Maybe its both. The war on alternative viewpoints is commencing in earnest. Can Substack authors escape? Glenn Greenwald left Substack entirely for another platform. Will Substack bow to the mis, dis, mal information Gods? What's your backup plan, el gato?
Dr VA Shiva explained the limited hangout in the Twitter-files that he already had proof on in 2020. See my latest Substack:
Shiva: "Who funded the Center for Internet Securities Clearing system to do this laundering of censorship? Pierre Omidyar who is the one who founded eBay. He’s the one who bought PayPal from Musk and Thiel. And guess who funded started and funded The Intercept (that did the limited hangout of the backdoor into Twitter) and funded it, Pierre Omidyar."
🗨 challenging the [GloboCap] ideological system itself is impossible, because there is no ground outside it from which to mount an attack. There are no external adversaries. There are only insurgencies, and counterinsurgency ops. The rest is intramural competition. 🤷🤬
I'm not so upset about cameras and even audio monitoring of public spaces. After all, every member of the public above the age of nine is walking around carrying a high powered video camera with a live internet uplink. Anything you do or say in public (and many private) spaces is subject to public posting on the internet with absolutely no help from the spooks. And it's been a long held legal premise that there no expectation of privacy when in public.
What does scare the hell out of me is the precedent set by the 1/6 persecutions and wholly corrupted agents of the Deep State controlling what publicly shot footage can and cannot be released. We saw the blatantly unconstitutional use of selective editing to empower Fancy Nancy's Star Chamber -- as well as the outcry when the full truth was made public. Don't believe for a second this tactic won't be used again and again moving forward.
Interesting and full of both fair points and unintended irony. It seems complicated but it can be simplified:
`1. The first problem with "disinformation" counter measures is who gets to define what is "truth" and what is "dis".
2. If it doesn't pass a logical consistency test, it's probably propaganda
What the record shows is that "To counter propaganda and disinformation" different propaganda and disinformation is used. There is a pretty visible clue.
Logical consistency: The claims Russia would use social media to attempt to influence public opinion are certainly plausible. So sure. And why not? Media, all media, is first and always a means to influence people. The point of open discourse. Where's the crime? See there's point one - assert that something normal is abnormal and thus a threat.
But even before seeing that BS, the idea that Russia would do so to favor the election of Trump makes no sense at all. If one simply looked at "what favors Vlad" it is clear it was Clinton, not Trump. Clinton == more of the same policies that were very favorable to Putin. Trump == ???.
In 2016 Putin's Russia was doing great under the policies of the Obama administration. His expansion into E. Europe was going great for him, with tacit support in Obama's second term ("when I'll have more latitude" to quote president Obama). Economic sanctions on Russia had been lifted. He was receiving the tech he needed increase Russia's ability to export oil and natural gas, which was providing the revenue he needed to fund his vision of "re-unifying" E. Europe under his new version of the USSR. The US under Obama was looking the other way and pressuring allies, especially in Europe, to do the same. Never mind that Russian behind the curtain. So Putin was getting no opposition and lots of help from the Obama administration. So less change is better.
Hilary Clinton promised to continue the policies of the Obama administration, which had been very good for Vlad. At best for Vlad, Trump was an unknown. Well, then came the "America first" speeches and all the positive reaction to them. So from Vlad's seat, a Trump admin looked like a bad thing. Potentially very bad for Putin. And he was not wrong in fact: Shortly after moving in, Trump raised caps on oil production and exports, and restored economic sanctions on Russia that Obama had lifted. US oil production began to compete with Russia and OPEC and took over the tops slots in W. European supply, seriously hurting Russian oil revenue. Soon Russian expansion into E. Europe slowed to a stop. That is until 2021 when US production and exports were cut by administrative edict, and Russia again wad sin control of energy products in Europe. 2021 and first half of 2022 was Obama 2.0 for Putin and despite some counter-theatre, still is.
So if Putin's Russia were influencing elections, who's side would be favored? It's pretty obvious.
The one thing western leaders - business or politics or other - has to do to discredit chinese, moslem or russian info-war is also the one thing said leaders cannot do:
Stop lying.
If they didn't lie, didn't use turd-polishing and semantic games, and stuck to working to improve actual factual matters instead of always trying to find politically correct magic rituals (like masking f.e.) to fix things with, non-western info-war wouldn't have anything to use, but would instead be forced to lie.
Meaning they could and would be exposed and disarmed.
Instead our leaders lie and gives our enemies weapons (don't kid yourself thinking Russia or China or any moslem state is a friend in any way to the West): all RT has to do to make western/american liberal capitalist democracy look bad?
Report the crime rate re: blacks and whites in the US, straight from official databases. Report on artists, journalists, musicians being silenced or cancelled or even imprisoned.
Thanks to our leaders, all they have to do is report the truth, adn all our leaders can respond with since they won't stop lying is calling the truth racist oranti-semitic or bigoted or some other deflection and projection.
If our leaders stopped lying, they would no longer need to fear "misinformation", since them being truthful would rebuild and recreate trust (in about a decade or so).
Side note: As for Clinton/Putin: the Clinton's and friends were about to gain control over almost all the oil and gas in Russia in 2008 (could be 2010, don't have the exact date in front of me), when Gazprom was going to be sold to US buyers tied to the Clintons et al. A purchase Putin stopped which also marks the point when USrethoric on Russia started to change from friendly to "Evil Empire"-bullshit so as to dehumanise Putin's mob-regime - as if that was needed for an old KGB man who used to train and equip terrorists in DDR in the 1980s.
The last sentence is the best: "If the underlying philosophy of the war against disinformation can be expressed in a single claim, it is this: You cannot be trusted with your own mind." Good article but I just have to add one little quibble: McCarthy was right.
Another Substack fact: apparently both Dr. Lee Merritt, former president of the American Association of Physicians and Surgeons, and Mike Yeadon, PhD, former Vice President of Pfizer, both brilliant and way ahead of the curve on all things "Plandemic" and injectable mRNA tech, were BOTH denied Substacks, according to their own words in interviews I happened to hear.
So perhaps the spooks reign here as well, or the management has it's own fears if they "go to far" in that "Free Speech" thing!
Dr Yeadon has previously said (then seemed to retract) that his Substack comments were not posting correctly - were being disappeared (this was 5,6 months ago). This is the first report that I have heard of anyone being "denied" a Substack account/site. Darn! - it has long seemed too good to be true; word is, it is hosted on Amazon servers. Here is a recent Yeadon written piece:
I’ve actually never tried to create a Substack account.
Anyone can find dozens of interviews by using search engines other than the fully captured ones like Google and Safari.
Use those & you get ten pages of Reuters smear pieces.
Try Yandex, Brave and you get a different picture. Which in itself is interesting, no?
I’ve definitely had disappearing post syndrome everywhere. I guess it depends on whether I’m controversial enough in a given moment to bother to actively censor. Very often, comments are deleted as I watch, unusually under YT videos. On Twitter I’m not even under my own name & using a VPN. I’m pretty sure many tweets can’t be liked or replied to.
In retrospect, I was perhaps the most serious threat to the U.K. arm of the plandemic crime during 2020. Now, I’m kryptonite to any authority because the number of crimes is so large that I can point them out convincingly using reason and science & to be irrefutable. So my reach has to be minimised.
If they weren’t able to do this technically, they’d have had to intern, abduct of murder me, so I suppose I should be grateful that they’re very good at what they do.
I’m not in the least frightened by the perpetrators. It’s not personal, them to me, the way it is vice versa.
I often say to doctors, if you’re scared of speaking out, just listen to what’s going to happen to you and your children if you don’t.
I just read your Off-Guardian piece linked above. The last paragraph -- and your point about the "asymmetry of risk" -- is spot-on, and should be chilling to anyone who is still "on the fence."
If you listen to the mainstream narrative, and you/they are wrong, you lose your life at best. At worst, you have purchased a subscription to a living hell of tyranny and iatrogenic illness.
If you listen to the "conspiracy theorists," and you are wrong, you will be looked at askance at best. At worst, you will be openly laughed at by your peers.
Unfortunately, the threat of public ridicule is a fate worse than death to many. For some individuals, it is their own version of hell. That social conditioning, I believe, is truly what we're up against -- demonic be damned; we're fighting basic Human biology. (Eek!)
For sure and I like that line of thinking! ;) However ... Therein begs the question.
I've had this conversation with a number of people, largely offline, and we simply cannot figure out WHY the WEF crowd does not seem to see that. Are they truly that stupid and blind? ... Why would they enact a plan that is guaranteed to leave behind those who are most likely to oppose them?
Thank you for clarifying and thank you for your courage.
For a full year, I have considered The Covid Lies (37 page PDF) the Definitive Mike Yeadon written statement. (There's really not a whole lot more to be said, until maybe the "next Pandemic" which Dr Faucci apparently has just hinted may be right on time for election year 2024).
Thanks. I’ve to add another: that there was never even a release of a novel respiratory pathogen. Of course! Why break a winning streak. 100% lies. Well done, perpetrators.
Most of the web is hosted by either AWS, Google, or governments contracting AWS and/or Google to provide the platforms.
All traffic on the WWW is carried via telecommunications infrastructure, provided and controlled by a few very large companies, which are heavily regulated by governments, or directly by governments.
The only real protection from content filtering and censorship is volume and noise.
There is no one I respect more than Dr Yeadon.. he was one of the first to sound the alarm for me 3 yrs ago... completely and utterly agree with his assessment..
Musk's intention isn't exactly transparent given that he is the poster child of some inspicuous, power-hungry ogligarchs whose "vision" is to transform the world according to a clandestine agenda
I think Musk just gets a huge kick out of yanking people's chains. Laughing at his own giant joke on whoever he thinks will give the most faux-appalled reaction. It's his money; good for him. I like watching him enjoy it like that.
Of course, some of his jabs are freakin' hilarious, which may influence my opinion.
Looks like a signal from Twitter acknowledging the threat that is Substack.
If Substack could integrate a reverse chron timeline they could go after a nice chunk of TAM.
I'm still banned on Twitter because I refuse to delete the tweets where I called Brian Stelter a fat fucking baby moron and told Oscar de Lahoya Piers Morgan Savid Javid et al to suck my dick (very bad taste but it was the time of mandating vaccines so everyone got the smoke)
Whoa. I read that "electric chair" as meaning you thought Tony was ready for one of those powered wheel chairs. Took a minute to get what you meant. Well that was hostile of you, after all, all Tony did was feed on fear and turn it into hate which probably escalated the death toll by an order of magnitude. So why so hostile? [sorry for the sarcasm, it's genetic]
Yeah. I lost three friends from high school to AIDS. My ex husband died last November of a sudden, massive heart attack. At least triple jabbed. He was still practicing as an attorney in NJ. Know of several colleagues here in WA who died of the jab in the past two years. I know no one who died from “Covid.” We need to start prosecuting crimes based on the Nuremberg Cide.
Go research Mao's 100-flowers campaign. Basically: draw out opponents with a false free speech "reprieve" so they can be identified as die-hards and targeted more precisely in the next round.
Most people don't know or have forgotten that for years Microsoft, when Gates and Allen were still active execs, supported Apple. Apple was unprofitable, and MS pumped lots of money to keep it afloat. Why? Simple math: The Mac, while a tiny fraction of the overall PC market, was a $600M to $1B a year market for Microsoft software products (Office mainly). Dropping $30M to $60M to keep a $600M market alive is good ROI.
This came up in the anti-trust suit against Microsoft (which BTW microsoft won). Then CEO of Apple was called upon to testify on all the mean things Microsoft had done to Apple. In his testimony he noted that among the evils were investing $30M just that year. Needless to say his testimony didn't help prosecutors.
BTW during the 1990s DoJ was using civil litigation to extort billions from tech companies. Assertions of anti-trust practices were the main lever. Rather than bring criminal charges, which require a burden of proof much higher than civil, DoJ was using civil litigation and in most all cases settlements were reached. The biz logic was simple: the US government has boundless resources and so it will be cheaper to pay now than go to court. And it was sound logic. Microsoft's chief said no to the lawyers who advised settling. He vowed to fight all the way. It was risky. All the experts panned the decision and predicted massive losses for the company. It was Gates who insisted and with support from Allen, the two prevailed. And in the end, Microsoft prevailed in the suits. DoJ lost. To my knowledge, that is the only case of big tech vs US government in which the government lost.
I’m still worried they’ll come for substack, too. Mark steyn has it right, he’s got his own site and payment processor all set up, is reliant on no so-called savior of free speech to keep his word, because he’s just seen people get burned so often before. See Canadian trucker fundraisers, etc.
But in the meantime here, how big pharma corrupts even The Masters…
Despite Musk's superficial rhetoric about free speech "absolutism", he has warned that he planned to limit "freedom of reach" and that explicitly included linking to other social media. It is no surprise that Substack would be near the top of his list.
The sooner we realize we need to move away from twitter and start working towards populating decentralized, censorship-resistant, non corporate alternatives, the better.
If u can talk, but no one can hear u, is it really free speech (like, if u yell, but have a muzzle on)? That's certainly not "absolutism". One could argue it's technically ppl being able to say what they want, but the purpose of saying words is to communicate with others, IMO. Elon is in it to make money. Conservatives should have known better, but they're looking for a saviour. Reminds me of Jews when they asked for a king to rule them. The masses like to follow.
Read Robert F Kennedy Jrs Wikipedia page which authoritatively proclaims he disseminates misinformation and is a conspiracy theorist. They have decided this.
I've often said, freedom of speech is not freedom to be heard. I do have the freedom to scroll down, to change the channel, and turn off the propaganda. But that doesn't mean reach should be limited.
It's not an easy balance, especially for ppl like Elon, whose intentions are to make money. If the advertisers get to dictate the content (we won't advertise IF u have X, Y, Z), then the only options are to censor the things they don't like so they'll keep advertising, ignore them & see if they're bluffing, & go find new advertisers. The problem w the latter is the new advertisers won't have as much money.
I think there should be a designated digital public square, where everything is allowed except illegal speech, then the private companies can do whatever they want, & censor to their heart's content. The problem is, the left would still find a way to censor, because they have federal agencies as partisan attack dogs, so they can declare speech they disagree with as harmful, illegal (by fiat/executive order), the speech would be removed, & it would take 4 or 5 years to make it's way through the courts, in order for the SCOTUS to resolve it. By then, whatever populist speech patterns they banned would be useless (for example memes, by & large, work by sarcasm of the zeitgeist. Once the public climate has changed, which it does fast, most aren't relevant anymore. A "u had to be there" type thing).
Another problem is making sure enough people would participate in a system recognized by the government as a town square, because skeptics, or most people really, don't want the government (who's notorious for overreach & violation of privacy) to have their personal account information, because they will no doubt use it to go around Congress (& make things like a national gun registration database, which many think is illegal & can't pass Congress, etc, etc).
So, it's not an easy task. Twitter already has a built-in user base, so i understand considering it the de facto public square, but there's still lots of problems that need to be ironed out, IMO (like whoever owning it getting to ban whoever they want, for any reason they want, because it's legally a private company, regardless of which side they're on. I disagree with banning people for legal speech, regardless of whether i agree with the speech. Speech everyone agrees with doesn't need protection from anyone, lol).
Quite the brief honeymoon being back on Twitter...I have never been on FB, Twitter or any social media other than Substack & I’m really happy to follow you, Eugippius & others here
Yeah, funny how those ex-FBI and CIA folks working for Twitter are all still there. They let Musk buy the nameplate on the front of the building, but the deep state remains at the controls.
Give them credit, these people know their business. It's easier to monitor one platform than 3, and 3 is easier than 20. They engineered a migration of traffic back to Twitter from startups like Truth Social, and now that they have achieved it, they are back to full scale censorship.
Funny also that the 'Fauci Files,' emails from America's Doctor to Twitter demanding action on "disinformation," a part of the Twitter Files that Musk himself has promoted, still haven't found their way to sunlight.
I'm surprised Substack is so popular amongst the censored crowd. It's hosted on AWS (Amazon Web Services), meaning Amazon can literally shut it down anytime.
aws is literally the only business entity of amazon that makes real money and afaik they’re known to like to send large bills instead of expulsing clients.
Epik.com (Registrar) seems to be the place for organizations that have been banned by their Registrar. GoDaddy banned ar15.com so they went to Epik and Gab.com uses Epik for obvious reasons.
The challenge is the software which makes the Substack ecosystem so appealing. I don't know if there exists out-of-the-box software on Epik's hosts (Cloudflare) or if one would have to roll their own using Wordpress plugins or other methods, which can be cost-prohibitive, time-consuming, and lack the seamless user experience across multiple Substack authors and content.
In my opinion, Amazon won't ban Substack - it's a great product. However, they could pick and choose who/what is allowed to post on Substack - similar to social media sites.
Regardless, YouTube/Twitter/FB taught us to always backup our content, which is a good idea regardless of the registrar/hosts.
So as I been saying, a guy whose business model is EVs and space littering...
A tool is only as good as its usefulness. Twitter was extremely useful to me in leading me to Substack.
No doubt there's gonna be a showdown and I've already been extremely leery of getting involved with Stripe, and you guys needing/wanting the income stream--we'll have to see, won't we, how big Substack's stones are gonna be when the showdown comes, because it's coming. No way it won't be.
Samizdat is only tolerable when it ain't the above-ground daily news.
My own little view is just ignore Twitter now. It's solidly cemented; all them shrieking blue checks who wuz gonna decamp to Mastodon found that Twitter's too convenient and big to leave.
I'd say the crucial strategy now is to make Substack too big to fail. And to hope Substack's owners have the brains and foresight to ensure they can't be squeezed by a payment processor that might get the willies down the road.
The problem is that almost everyone participating in social media has an emotional age of 12. I've been foolishly disappointed to see how true that is.
There's no one I previously admired or thought had at least a little common sense and decency, before 2016, who proved to be worthy of any regard. The concept of "public intellectual" needs to be trash-binned. Even a lot of people purportedly "on our side" re the Covidiocies show themselves foolish in so many things.
I understand that Substack is now an important source of income for those who've been resisting the considerable destruction of all standards of scientific research and useful public policy, and they've paid terrible costs in loss of jobs, reputations, friendships, future employment etc. and so the throttling of links and limiting of reach have very serious consequences. Everyone does need to pay rent or mortgages or property taxes and to secure the futures of their children or ensure the wellbeing of aged parents etc. etc. etc.
But this is also a necessary reminder that we cannot rely on any service vulnerable to the whims and pressures upon owners and that governments can squeeze in a gazillion ways. We've got to be much smarter and much more capable of evading what they try to do to us.
Some very good points, some a little to broad brushed negative, e.g. "There's no one I previously admired or thought had at least a little common sense and decency, before 2016, who proved to be worthy of any regard."
Really? No one at all? El Gato Malo? Alex Berenson?
I have no problem with folks getting paid on Substack or any platform that doesn't censor.
But why pay Blue Check for "protection"?
Disclaimer: To me Twitter is largely a massive waste of time, too often a form of public masturbation, by nature catering to folks with extremely limited attention spans, who gravitate to snippy one-liners, simplistic and crude memes etc. And I admit to getting sucked into it. A harmful addiction I'm ending.
The breadcrumb trail from Twitter led me to Substack--and started because I Googled something about Berenson and found his Twitter feed. Reading him led me to el gato malo and Eugyppius, and reading comments threads led me to the others I then subscribed to.
I don't scorn any useful resource for finding stuff, but Twitter easily becomes a massive time-waster because one can't easily resist responding.
Now I've got more than enough to read coming into my inbox daily and I had to remind myself that in a big world full of words, one can't hope to ever read all of them, and I'll have to resign myself to dying not fully educated on every possible topic of interest.
I go on Twitter every day but mostly just read, like, and occasionally retweet (I almost never tweet). I've noticed a lot of changes to my feed lately and I don't find much of interest. Initially when Elon took over I was seeing lots of good content and I was really interested when he let the journalists have access to the Twitter files but the outrage seemed to fizzle out and now it just feels like a censored wasteland like mainstream media.
When substack added / tested the chat feature I knew instantly they were going to be the new better twitter. I was so happy espeically because the chat was directly with the author and followers not just random bar room chat. Then when they came out with the investment opportunity I am all in!! Hope this goes well for substack. IMO the best platform out there.
with the show trial of DJT going on it seems they're not so subtly trying to attack and censor through any channels they can without triggering a "twitter files" response from society. I will say though, it is shocking how many liberals are NOT concerned with what is happening. History repeats itself
I also noticed “weird” new censorship or “content moderation” on GETTR. Giving me a warning ⚠️ before content from Dr McCullough. 🤡🤡
one wonders about issues like this...
https://twitter.com/ShellenbergerMD/status/1644085325621510145?s=20
Interesting thread, and some interesting irony also. All those responses to Alex raised his eyeballs score dramatically. Which makes twitter a tad more valuable.
We could "defund" twitter by simply refusing to look at it. If everyone stopped using it, it'd die, Musk would be bummed (though I'm sure he's made money already), and something would either fill the demand, if there is one, or we'd all find other things to do.
BTW never twittered but have become a fan of substack. I like the variety of content and the mostly interesting discussion threads which are also mostly civil. Not a lot of name calling and litany repeating, which gets old quick.
Tumblr?
To me that suggests a glass from which one sips Bourbon.
Precisely!
Add Michael and Matt Taibi to your list of Stackers. I believed that their Bird problems were related to their stories on the Censorship Industrial Complex until I read this post. (Please note the irony of the Bird messing with the reporters of The Twitter Files.). Maybe its both. The war on alternative viewpoints is commencing in earnest. Can Substack authors escape? Glenn Greenwald left Substack entirely for another platform. Will Substack bow to the mis, dis, mal information Gods? What's your backup plan, el gato?
Dr VA Shiva explained the limited hangout in the Twitter-files that he already had proof on in 2020. See my latest Substack:
Shiva: "Who funded the Center for Internet Securities Clearing system to do this laundering of censorship? Pierre Omidyar who is the one who founded eBay. He’s the one who bought PayPal from Musk and Thiel. And guess who funded started and funded The Intercept (that did the limited hangout of the backdoor into Twitter) and funded it, Pierre Omidyar."
Yep. They're always playing games. Until people stop falling for them, they will continue.
🗨 challenging the [GloboCap] ideological system itself is impossible, because there is no ground outside it from which to mount an attack. There are no external adversaries. There are only insurgencies, and counterinsurgency ops. The rest is intramural competition. 🤷🤬
cjhopkins.substack.com/p/the-new-normal-left
Sadly, not many. They just follow the shiny objects and obey the rules.
TL;DR but skimmed it.
I'm not so upset about cameras and even audio monitoring of public spaces. After all, every member of the public above the age of nine is walking around carrying a high powered video camera with a live internet uplink. Anything you do or say in public (and many private) spaces is subject to public posting on the internet with absolutely no help from the spooks. And it's been a long held legal premise that there no expectation of privacy when in public.
What does scare the hell out of me is the precedent set by the 1/6 persecutions and wholly corrupted agents of the Deep State controlling what publicly shot footage can and cannot be released. We saw the blatantly unconstitutional use of selective editing to empower Fancy Nancy's Star Chamber -- as well as the outcry when the full truth was made public. Don't believe for a second this tactic won't be used again and again moving forward.
I'd feel a whole lot better if I could believe that most Americans thought this way. Sadly, far too many do not.
Interesting and full of both fair points and unintended irony. It seems complicated but it can be simplified:
`1. The first problem with "disinformation" counter measures is who gets to define what is "truth" and what is "dis".
2. If it doesn't pass a logical consistency test, it's probably propaganda
What the record shows is that "To counter propaganda and disinformation" different propaganda and disinformation is used. There is a pretty visible clue.
Logical consistency: The claims Russia would use social media to attempt to influence public opinion are certainly plausible. So sure. And why not? Media, all media, is first and always a means to influence people. The point of open discourse. Where's the crime? See there's point one - assert that something normal is abnormal and thus a threat.
But even before seeing that BS, the idea that Russia would do so to favor the election of Trump makes no sense at all. If one simply looked at "what favors Vlad" it is clear it was Clinton, not Trump. Clinton == more of the same policies that were very favorable to Putin. Trump == ???.
In 2016 Putin's Russia was doing great under the policies of the Obama administration. His expansion into E. Europe was going great for him, with tacit support in Obama's second term ("when I'll have more latitude" to quote president Obama). Economic sanctions on Russia had been lifted. He was receiving the tech he needed increase Russia's ability to export oil and natural gas, which was providing the revenue he needed to fund his vision of "re-unifying" E. Europe under his new version of the USSR. The US under Obama was looking the other way and pressuring allies, especially in Europe, to do the same. Never mind that Russian behind the curtain. So Putin was getting no opposition and lots of help from the Obama administration. So less change is better.
Hilary Clinton promised to continue the policies of the Obama administration, which had been very good for Vlad. At best for Vlad, Trump was an unknown. Well, then came the "America first" speeches and all the positive reaction to them. So from Vlad's seat, a Trump admin looked like a bad thing. Potentially very bad for Putin. And he was not wrong in fact: Shortly after moving in, Trump raised caps on oil production and exports, and restored economic sanctions on Russia that Obama had lifted. US oil production began to compete with Russia and OPEC and took over the tops slots in W. European supply, seriously hurting Russian oil revenue. Soon Russian expansion into E. Europe slowed to a stop. That is until 2021 when US production and exports were cut by administrative edict, and Russia again wad sin control of energy products in Europe. 2021 and first half of 2022 was Obama 2.0 for Putin and despite some counter-theatre, still is.
So if Putin's Russia were influencing elections, who's side would be favored? It's pretty obvious.
The one thing western leaders - business or politics or other - has to do to discredit chinese, moslem or russian info-war is also the one thing said leaders cannot do:
Stop lying.
If they didn't lie, didn't use turd-polishing and semantic games, and stuck to working to improve actual factual matters instead of always trying to find politically correct magic rituals (like masking f.e.) to fix things with, non-western info-war wouldn't have anything to use, but would instead be forced to lie.
Meaning they could and would be exposed and disarmed.
Instead our leaders lie and gives our enemies weapons (don't kid yourself thinking Russia or China or any moslem state is a friend in any way to the West): all RT has to do to make western/american liberal capitalist democracy look bad?
Report the crime rate re: blacks and whites in the US, straight from official databases. Report on artists, journalists, musicians being silenced or cancelled or even imprisoned.
Thanks to our leaders, all they have to do is report the truth, adn all our leaders can respond with since they won't stop lying is calling the truth racist oranti-semitic or bigoted or some other deflection and projection.
If our leaders stopped lying, they would no longer need to fear "misinformation", since them being truthful would rebuild and recreate trust (in about a decade or so).
Side note: As for Clinton/Putin: the Clinton's and friends were about to gain control over almost all the oil and gas in Russia in 2008 (could be 2010, don't have the exact date in front of me), when Gazprom was going to be sold to US buyers tied to the Clintons et al. A purchase Putin stopped which also marks the point when USrethoric on Russia started to change from friendly to "Evil Empire"-bullshit so as to dehumanise Putin's mob-regime - as if that was needed for an old KGB man who used to train and equip terrorists in DDR in the 1980s.
The last sentence is the best: "If the underlying philosophy of the war against disinformation can be expressed in a single claim, it is this: You cannot be trusted with your own mind." Good article but I just have to add one little quibble: McCarthy was right.
i'm waiting for the long run then.
Several docs ...all of them who signed the great barrington declaration & basically anyone not pushing the kill shots and the rest of the LIES.
Another Substack fact: apparently both Dr. Lee Merritt, former president of the American Association of Physicians and Surgeons, and Mike Yeadon, PhD, former Vice President of Pfizer, both brilliant and way ahead of the curve on all things "Plandemic" and injectable mRNA tech, were BOTH denied Substacks, according to their own words in interviews I happened to hear.
So perhaps the spooks reign here as well, or the management has it's own fears if they "go to far" in that "Free Speech" thing!
Dr Yeadon has previously said (then seemed to retract) that his Substack comments were not posting correctly - were being disappeared (this was 5,6 months ago). This is the first report that I have heard of anyone being "denied" a Substack account/site. Darn! - it has long seemed too good to be true; word is, it is hosted on Amazon servers. Here is a recent Yeadon written piece:
https://off-guardian.org/2023/04/06/why-i-dont-believe-there-ever-was-a-covid-virus/
I’ve actually never tried to create a Substack account.
Anyone can find dozens of interviews by using search engines other than the fully captured ones like Google and Safari.
Use those & you get ten pages of Reuters smear pieces.
Try Yandex, Brave and you get a different picture. Which in itself is interesting, no?
I’ve definitely had disappearing post syndrome everywhere. I guess it depends on whether I’m controversial enough in a given moment to bother to actively censor. Very often, comments are deleted as I watch, unusually under YT videos. On Twitter I’m not even under my own name & using a VPN. I’m pretty sure many tweets can’t be liked or replied to.
In retrospect, I was perhaps the most serious threat to the U.K. arm of the plandemic crime during 2020. Now, I’m kryptonite to any authority because the number of crimes is so large that I can point them out convincingly using reason and science & to be irrefutable. So my reach has to be minimised.
If they weren’t able to do this technically, they’d have had to intern, abduct of murder me, so I suppose I should be grateful that they’re very good at what they do.
I’m not in the least frightened by the perpetrators. It’s not personal, them to me, the way it is vice versa.
I often say to doctors, if you’re scared of speaking out, just listen to what’s going to happen to you and your children if you don’t.
I just read your Off-Guardian piece linked above. The last paragraph -- and your point about the "asymmetry of risk" -- is spot-on, and should be chilling to anyone who is still "on the fence."
If you listen to the mainstream narrative, and you/they are wrong, you lose your life at best. At worst, you have purchased a subscription to a living hell of tyranny and iatrogenic illness.
If you listen to the "conspiracy theorists," and you are wrong, you will be looked at askance at best. At worst, you will be openly laughed at by your peers.
Unfortunately, the threat of public ridicule is a fate worse than death to many. For some individuals, it is their own version of hell. That social conditioning, I believe, is truly what we're up against -- demonic be damned; we're fighting basic Human biology. (Eek!)
Yes, and human biology is often such that, as one psychologist told me, “People would prefer to die with the herd than to leave the herd”.
That leaves as potential survivors only those who don’t follow herds!
For sure and I like that line of thinking! ;) However ... Therein begs the question.
I've had this conversation with a number of people, largely offline, and we simply cannot figure out WHY the WEF crowd does not seem to see that. Are they truly that stupid and blind? ... Why would they enact a plan that is guaranteed to leave behind those who are most likely to oppose them?
Thank you for clarifying and thank you for your courage.
For a full year, I have considered The Covid Lies (37 page PDF) the Definitive Mike Yeadon written statement. (There's really not a whole lot more to be said, until maybe the "next Pandemic" which Dr Faucci apparently has just hinted may be right on time for election year 2024).
https://doctors4covidethics.org/the-covid-lies/
(duckduckgo actually put that on top of the helpful slew of fact checkers!)
And, of course, I always keep a hard copy readily available - a samizdat fall back strategy should be part of any prepper's repertoire.
Thanks. I’ve to add another: that there was never even a release of a novel respiratory pathogen. Of course! Why break a winning streak. 100% lies. Well done, perpetrators.
Most of the web is hosted by either AWS, Google, or governments contracting AWS and/or Google to provide the platforms.
All traffic on the WWW is carried via telecommunications infrastructure, provided and controlled by a few very large companies, which are heavily regulated by governments, or directly by governments.
The only real protection from content filtering and censorship is volume and noise.
There is no one I respect more than Dr Yeadon.. he was one of the first to sound the alarm for me 3 yrs ago... completely and utterly agree with his assessment..
They are here. Hannah Williams is keeping an eye on us all.
of course they are here. I get likes from an account with no username.
Someone likes you too?
THIS!😂😂
LoL
She has liked old comments of mine recently.
Oh I see Hannah has perhaps been cautioned about inauthentic behavior.
Seems so
LOL so obvious.
😹
A podcaster I listen to, Steve Deace, says the majority of censorship he experiences is on TruthSocial lol
Agreed. I'm seeing the same. GETTR is going to hell, as well. Sadly!
Odd. You won’t find that on Parler.
Yes...I am leaving GETTR because it's not better........
*whispers* Come to Gab...it's better...
the twitter files were handled by substack celebrities. there’s that.
But Musk chose them.
I hope this isn't by malicious intent and Musk's really in it for Free Speech.
I want to believe.
musk is riding alternative popular tides. that’s it. like trump.
Musk's intention isn't exactly transparent given that he is the poster child of some inspicuous, power-hungry ogligarchs whose "vision" is to transform the world according to a clandestine agenda
Well at least I'm not the first to burst the bubble.
Musk is in it for the money. Musk does what is best for Elon Musk. Clear pattern.
Not saying that's wrong, just that it is.
Damn. Must be losin' it! Completely agree with you. Again.
No worries. Surely I'll post something to which you can object real soon :-)
If I'm not pissing someone off, I'm probably asleep.
Musk is in for the money. Full stop. If he smells competition, clamps down.
If this substack treatment is not the same as NYT or other “print” media, Substack should sue.
I think Musk just gets a huge kick out of yanking people's chains. Laughing at his own giant joke on whoever he thinks will give the most faux-appalled reaction. It's his money; good for him. I like watching him enjoy it like that.
Of course, some of his jabs are freakin' hilarious, which may influence my opinion.
Looks like a signal from Twitter acknowledging the threat that is Substack.
If Substack could integrate a reverse chron timeline they could go after a nice chunk of TAM.
I'm still banned on Twitter because I refuse to delete the tweets where I called Brian Stelter a fat fucking baby moron and told Oscar de Lahoya Piers Morgan Savid Javid et al to suck my dick (very bad taste but it was the time of mandating vaccines so everyone got the smoke)
Yeah, I am perma banned for calling for electric chair for Fauci. It isn’t a huge loss. I have my Substacks.
Whoa. I read that "electric chair" as meaning you thought Tony was ready for one of those powered wheel chairs. Took a minute to get what you meant. Well that was hostile of you, after all, all Tony did was feed on fear and turn it into hate which probably escalated the death toll by an order of magnitude. So why so hostile? [sorry for the sarcasm, it's genetic]
Yeah. I lost three friends from high school to AIDS. My ex husband died last November of a sudden, massive heart attack. At least triple jabbed. He was still practicing as an attorney in NJ. Know of several colleagues here in WA who died of the jab in the past two years. I know no one who died from “Covid.” We need to start prosecuting crimes based on the Nuremberg Cide.
"all Tony did was feed on fear ..."
um, no.
https://margaretannaalice.substack.com/p/a-mostly-peaceful-depopulation
I should have said create, deepen and then feed on fear to promote hate.
The "all Tony did" was hopelessly sarcastic. He did more than enough to earn contempt.
Great link, thanks.
Madame La Guillotine is more environmentally sensible than using high volt electricity.
(Also genetically impaired by sarcasm)
Well, for now, I need it for my profession. But good idea.
Go research Mao's 100-flowers campaign. Basically: draw out opponents with a false free speech "reprieve" so they can be identified as die-hards and targeted more precisely in the next round.
The matches the general Cultural Revolution vibe of the last few years.
If Elon has declared war on Substack. He will not win
It’s like Bill Gates vs Steve Jobs.
More like your own gun vs. your own foot.
Most people don't know or have forgotten that for years Microsoft, when Gates and Allen were still active execs, supported Apple. Apple was unprofitable, and MS pumped lots of money to keep it afloat. Why? Simple math: The Mac, while a tiny fraction of the overall PC market, was a $600M to $1B a year market for Microsoft software products (Office mainly). Dropping $30M to $60M to keep a $600M market alive is good ROI.
This came up in the anti-trust suit against Microsoft (which BTW microsoft won). Then CEO of Apple was called upon to testify on all the mean things Microsoft had done to Apple. In his testimony he noted that among the evils were investing $30M just that year. Needless to say his testimony didn't help prosecutors.
BTW during the 1990s DoJ was using civil litigation to extort billions from tech companies. Assertions of anti-trust practices were the main lever. Rather than bring criminal charges, which require a burden of proof much higher than civil, DoJ was using civil litigation and in most all cases settlements were reached. The biz logic was simple: the US government has boundless resources and so it will be cheaper to pay now than go to court. And it was sound logic. Microsoft's chief said no to the lawyers who advised settling. He vowed to fight all the way. It was risky. All the experts panned the decision and predicted massive losses for the company. It was Gates who insisted and with support from Allen, the two prevailed. And in the end, Microsoft prevailed in the suits. DoJ lost. To my knowledge, that is the only case of big tech vs US government in which the government lost.
He may find a way to buy it though ;-)
I'm thinking the culprit is a stealth Twitter employee who should have been fired in the first round.
there's tons of ex-feds in there I bet
Want to see Twitter and other social media infiltration? Visit winbackfreedom.com
That occurred to me too, but if that were the case, Musk would have sorted it asap. So much for free speech on twitter....
Probably a number of them. A reprise of Operation GLADIO
I’m still worried they’ll come for substack, too. Mark steyn has it right, he’s got his own site and payment processor all set up, is reliant on no so-called savior of free speech to keep his word, because he’s just seen people get burned so often before. See Canadian trucker fundraisers, etc.
But in the meantime here, how big pharma corrupts even The Masters…
https://gaty.substack.com/p/fore-the-big-golf-controversy-and
In zero hedge comments about substack looking for funding (SVB and VC $ drying up), somebody said substack is where “they” keep an eye on antivaxxers.
Of course the hosts of those websites might be suspect...but what can you do?
Despite Musk's superficial rhetoric about free speech "absolutism", he has warned that he planned to limit "freedom of reach" and that explicitly included linking to other social media. It is no surprise that Substack would be near the top of his list.
The sooner we realize we need to move away from twitter and start working towards populating decentralized, censorship-resistant, non corporate alternatives, the better.
Where are the Fraudci files that he promised us?!
If u can talk, but no one can hear u, is it really free speech (like, if u yell, but have a muzzle on)? That's certainly not "absolutism". One could argue it's technically ppl being able to say what they want, but the purpose of saying words is to communicate with others, IMO. Elon is in it to make money. Conservatives should have known better, but they're looking for a saviour. Reminds me of Jews when they asked for a king to rule them. The masses like to follow.
Read Robert F Kennedy Jrs Wikipedia page which authoritatively proclaims he disseminates misinformation and is a conspiracy theorist. They have decided this.
I've often said, freedom of speech is not freedom to be heard. I do have the freedom to scroll down, to change the channel, and turn off the propaganda. But that doesn't mean reach should be limited.
It's not an easy balance, especially for ppl like Elon, whose intentions are to make money. If the advertisers get to dictate the content (we won't advertise IF u have X, Y, Z), then the only options are to censor the things they don't like so they'll keep advertising, ignore them & see if they're bluffing, & go find new advertisers. The problem w the latter is the new advertisers won't have as much money.
I think there should be a designated digital public square, where everything is allowed except illegal speech, then the private companies can do whatever they want, & censor to their heart's content. The problem is, the left would still find a way to censor, because they have federal agencies as partisan attack dogs, so they can declare speech they disagree with as harmful, illegal (by fiat/executive order), the speech would be removed, & it would take 4 or 5 years to make it's way through the courts, in order for the SCOTUS to resolve it. By then, whatever populist speech patterns they banned would be useless (for example memes, by & large, work by sarcasm of the zeitgeist. Once the public climate has changed, which it does fast, most aren't relevant anymore. A "u had to be there" type thing).
Another problem is making sure enough people would participate in a system recognized by the government as a town square, because skeptics, or most people really, don't want the government (who's notorious for overreach & violation of privacy) to have their personal account information, because they will no doubt use it to go around Congress (& make things like a national gun registration database, which many think is illegal & can't pass Congress, etc, etc).
So, it's not an easy task. Twitter already has a built-in user base, so i understand considering it the de facto public square, but there's still lots of problems that need to be ironed out, IMO (like whoever owning it getting to ban whoever they want, for any reason they want, because it's legally a private company, regardless of which side they're on. I disagree with banning people for legal speech, regardless of whether i agree with the speech. Speech everyone agrees with doesn't need protection from anyone, lol).
Dump the bird...
Quite the brief honeymoon being back on Twitter...I have never been on FB, Twitter or any social media other than Substack & I’m really happy to follow you, Eugippius & others here
Agree 100%. Love substack, Twitter is sort of like reading the corrupted daily mail😂😂😂
Yeah, funny how those ex-FBI and CIA folks working for Twitter are all still there. They let Musk buy the nameplate on the front of the building, but the deep state remains at the controls.
Give them credit, these people know their business. It's easier to monitor one platform than 3, and 3 is easier than 20. They engineered a migration of traffic back to Twitter from startups like Truth Social, and now that they have achieved it, they are back to full scale censorship.
Funny also that the 'Fauci Files,' emails from America's Doctor to Twitter demanding action on "disinformation," a part of the Twitter Files that Musk himself has promoted, still haven't found their way to sunlight.
Must be a wacky coincidence.
Is your "special purpose" a reference to the Steve Martin movie "The Jerk?"
absolutely
Operation GLADIO, redux
I'm surprised Substack is so popular amongst the censored crowd. It's hosted on AWS (Amazon Web Services), meaning Amazon can literally shut it down anytime.
aws is literally the only business entity of amazon that makes real money and afaik they’re known to like to send large bills instead of expulsing clients.
Remember Parler?
i did not. well…
ZSC yes, I myself feel chipped tagged corralled on here but I'm too far beyond hiding and no one's in real life yet playing outside.
There is that. Thanks, it is something important to think about
wen "not your servers not your websites?"
Where should we go?
Epik.com (Registrar) seems to be the place for organizations that have been banned by their Registrar. GoDaddy banned ar15.com so they went to Epik and Gab.com uses Epik for obvious reasons.
The challenge is the software which makes the Substack ecosystem so appealing. I don't know if there exists out-of-the-box software on Epik's hosts (Cloudflare) or if one would have to roll their own using Wordpress plugins or other methods, which can be cost-prohibitive, time-consuming, and lack the seamless user experience across multiple Substack authors and content.
In my opinion, Amazon won't ban Substack - it's a great product. However, they could pick and choose who/what is allowed to post on Substack - similar to social media sites.
Regardless, YouTube/Twitter/FB taught us to always backup our content, which is a good idea regardless of the registrar/hosts.
So as I been saying, a guy whose business model is EVs and space littering...
A tool is only as good as its usefulness. Twitter was extremely useful to me in leading me to Substack.
No doubt there's gonna be a showdown and I've already been extremely leery of getting involved with Stripe, and you guys needing/wanting the income stream--we'll have to see, won't we, how big Substack's stones are gonna be when the showdown comes, because it's coming. No way it won't be.
Samizdat is only tolerable when it ain't the above-ground daily news.
My own little view is just ignore Twitter now. It's solidly cemented; all them shrieking blue checks who wuz gonna decamp to Mastodon found that Twitter's too convenient and big to leave.
I'd say the crucial strategy now is to make Substack too big to fail. And to hope Substack's owners have the brains and foresight to ensure they can't be squeezed by a payment processor that might get the willies down the road.
Who keeps paying for Blue Check "protection" while their brothers in arms are censored and shadowbanned?
The problem is that almost everyone participating in social media has an emotional age of 12. I've been foolishly disappointed to see how true that is.
There's no one I previously admired or thought had at least a little common sense and decency, before 2016, who proved to be worthy of any regard. The concept of "public intellectual" needs to be trash-binned. Even a lot of people purportedly "on our side" re the Covidiocies show themselves foolish in so many things.
I understand that Substack is now an important source of income for those who've been resisting the considerable destruction of all standards of scientific research and useful public policy, and they've paid terrible costs in loss of jobs, reputations, friendships, future employment etc. and so the throttling of links and limiting of reach have very serious consequences. Everyone does need to pay rent or mortgages or property taxes and to secure the futures of their children or ensure the wellbeing of aged parents etc. etc. etc.
But this is also a necessary reminder that we cannot rely on any service vulnerable to the whims and pressures upon owners and that governments can squeeze in a gazillion ways. We've got to be much smarter and much more capable of evading what they try to do to us.
Some very good points, some a little to broad brushed negative, e.g. "There's no one I previously admired or thought had at least a little common sense and decency, before 2016, who proved to be worthy of any regard."
Really? No one at all? El Gato Malo? Alex Berenson?
I have no problem with folks getting paid on Substack or any platform that doesn't censor.
But why pay Blue Check for "protection"?
Disclaimer: To me Twitter is largely a massive waste of time, too often a form of public masturbation, by nature catering to folks with extremely limited attention spans, who gravitate to snippy one-liners, simplistic and crude memes etc. And I admit to getting sucked into it. A harmful addiction I'm ending.
Note my date there.
The breadcrumb trail from Twitter led me to Substack--and started because I Googled something about Berenson and found his Twitter feed. Reading him led me to el gato malo and Eugyppius, and reading comments threads led me to the others I then subscribed to.
I don't scorn any useful resource for finding stuff, but Twitter easily becomes a massive time-waster because one can't easily resist responding.
Now I've got more than enough to read coming into my inbox daily and I had to remind myself that in a big world full of words, one can't hope to ever read all of them, and I'll have to resign myself to dying not fully educated on every possible topic of interest.
I can't resist responding here either, can I?
That relentless need to connect, even to strangers in Etherland.
I go on Twitter every day but mostly just read, like, and occasionally retweet (I almost never tweet). I've noticed a lot of changes to my feed lately and I don't find much of interest. Initially when Elon took over I was seeing lots of good content and I was really interested when he let the journalists have access to the Twitter files but the outrage seemed to fizzle out and now it just feels like a censored wasteland like mainstream media.
I noticed a big change, no more Covid PSA's telling older folks that they can finally see their kids if they simply get the vaccine.
When substack added / tested the chat feature I knew instantly they were going to be the new better twitter. I was so happy espeically because the chat was directly with the author and followers not just random bar room chat. Then when they came out with the investment opportunity I am all in!! Hope this goes well for substack. IMO the best platform out there.
with the show trial of DJT going on it seems they're not so subtly trying to attack and censor through any channels they can without triggering a "twitter files" response from society. I will say though, it is shocking how many liberals are NOT concerned with what is happening. History repeats itself
DJT trial is like a magician’s sleight of hand. Don’t look over here. Pay attention there … if you’re mad, check it. What are they hiding now?
im growing to hate twatter, according to twatter 99% of the population must be trans
all i see is trans bullshit. endless tweets about some escaped lunatic called dylan.
i live in a town with a disproportionate number of gay people yet ive still only met 2 trans people in my entire life.