123 Comments

Yes. A thousand times, yes. There is no sane counter argument; only blatant censorship. Your move, Elon.

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You say? 😏

🗨 Information laundering is really quite ferocious. It’s when a huckster takes some lies and makes them sound precocious [...]. They’re laundering disinfo and we really should take note, and not support their lies with our wallet, voice or throat.

Should ring a loud bell. A hint if it fails: supercalifragilisticexpialidocious 😁

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She said it backward this way: dociousaliexpisticfragicalirupus. Why do I remember that? Who knows?!

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<*That* woman>™ ackshoolly said no such thing, forward or backward likewise—yet no denial zer whole shtick sounded sillily close to that 🤭

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according to musk the problem are the bots.

i mean…

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Isn't that the rational for the $ blue check; you have a million bots you pay $11 million which is to discourage bots? Just asking.

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"Freedom of speech is the great bulwark of liberty; they prosper and die together: And it is the terror of traitors and oppressors, and a barrier against them. It produces excellent writers, and encourages men of fine genius.

Tacitus tells us, that the Roman commonwealth bred great and numerous authors, who writ with equal boldness and eloquence: But when it was enslaved, those great wits were no more. Postquam bellatum apud Actium; atque omnem potestatem ad unum conferri pacts interfuit, magna illa ingenia cessere. [“After the battle of Actium, when the interests of peace required that all power should be conferred on one man, great geniuses ceased work.”]

Tyranny had usurped the place of equality, which is the soul of liberty, and destroyed publick courage. The minds of men, terrified by unjust power, degenerated into all the vileness and methods of servitude: Abject sycophancy and blind submission grew the only means of preferment, and indeed of safety; men durst not open their mouths, but to flatter."

- Cato's Letters (John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon)

That was written in 1720 over 300 years ago.

I think they got it right...and we are now at the abyss.

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"Free speech is dangerous to foes of the Enlightenment and they know it. So they have at it by accusing these opponents of all sorts of grave crimes and misdemeanors, most of them clearly absurd--in other words, by calling them names and trying to scare them."

~ H.L. Mencken

"Once a country accepts censorship of the press and of speech, then nothing can be won without violence. Therefore, so long as you have free speech, protect it. This is the life and death issue in this country: do not give up the freedom of the press, of newspapers, books, magazines, television, radios, movies, and every other form of presenting ideas. So long as that’s free, a peaceful intellectual turn is possible."

~ Ayn Rand

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I think we're going to have to organize, in short order, or there will be violence.

At some point, in a "free" country, you would think it would come from the "ground" when it can no longer be "tilled".

But I'm not sure people don't mind being "plowed"...lmao...but also serious.

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Well, there is already violence. The time for organized self-defense may be close at hand, although great care and discretion must be taken to avoid Bush II and Obama's "extraordinary rendition" that has, as predicted, been turned inward, most notably, but certainly not exclusively, against the J6 protestors.

The Democratic Party has been taken over by Machiavellian-Jacobin lunatics, and have been responsible for nearly all political violence since 2016, and arguably before.

https://lists.grabien.com/list-left-wing-political-violence-america

I believe that the mother of all inflationary depressions that many of us have been anticipating for decades may have finally crossed the threshold between inevitable and imminent, for a variety of reasons, economic and political, too numerous and complex to delve into here.

The successors to the KKK are antifa ("anti-fascists", don't you know, who violently support fascism, which they confuse with freedom, in typical leftist idiocy) and BLM useful idiots, who collectively make up an army of leftist thugs ready to do whatever the "activists" and "community organizers" tell them.

Just like in the Summer of 2020, which I consider a dry run for when the progressive experiment we've endured for over a century finally implodes.

This why I have decided to join and support the Libertarian Party, which was recently taken over by the Mises Caucus, who are intent on making the party actually libertarian, rather than the semi-statist clown show it has been since Harry Browne.

With the indictment of Trump (preceded by the abuse and persecution of several of his most prominent supporters), the Dems have opened up pandora's box, goading the GOP to reciprocate. Should they do so, and frankly, I hope they do, this could escalate into the destruction of both major parties, as each prosecutes and jails the noxious career criminal leadership of the other.

The LP, despite its current diminutive relative numbers, could find itself ascendant in the chaotic vacuum with a powerful platform and concrete plan to restore the republic to something like the Founder's intended.

This may seem unlikely, but U.S. history is replete with similar large-scale political shifts.

Bring it on, says I.

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AGREE

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RG, I think there is ALREADY far too much "violence". A state that blithely ignores, or perhaps sanctions, the murder of unarmed protesters, locks subjects in cages for two years, without trial, or turns a series of arrests of political foes into Keystone Cops circuses, is actively, and deliberately, inciting violence. As they are when they pervert or politicize 'justice system' to punish non-crimes by political opponents, and ignore very real, horrifyingly violent crimes by the politically correct.

I have wagered, (and I hope to God I lose that bet), that we will see "martial law" declared before the 2024 election. For our own good, of course!

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24' is going to be a year for the ages. There's no doubt in my mind.

Liberty is at stake. That's no longer a political slogan. We just happen to live at this time in history.

It's on us...and up to us. I pray, it's in us.

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We are bearing witness to the fall of an empire.

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Yes. This became very evident to me in the 1980s with the success the propaganda at the time had in elevating business as a panacea saviour against government corruption. That allowed corporatist business to move into government. Then the elevation of banks into what makes an economy thrive, instead of the reality that they are a kind of parasite that will, if let alone, leach the life out a society. Then in the early 2000s the advent and elevation of MBAs – More Bad Advice – into priests. Then business began to fail. Then the MBAs into government accelerated their decline.

At the time I would say to people around me, 'We are actually watching and participating in Rome burning. *This* is Rome burning.' I worked in an engineering department that was being eviscerated because it wasn't a profit centre and was deemed healthy after it could no longer adequately complete the design and build of the communications infrastructure.

And I would also say, 'History is blunt. Greed is more stupefying than sex. When the money begins to collect into the few, the more they will take until the workers have a choice: die ignobly of overwork/deadly work or starvation created by the fat cats, or die fighting for a better life. Pooling the wealth has almost always ended in blood.'

Guess what. Greed is more stupefying than sex. With covid, it seems that greed/power, which are pretty close to the same but not, combined with the altruism of eugenics/transhumanism to save the human race and climate to save the planet takes stupidity beyond what I was able to imagine at the time. Wow! That is a truly stupefying combination.

Back then I would add 'And I hope that I am dead before it came to a head decapitated.' Well... guess not. Here I am. Life does have a wicked sense of humour.

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so, the empire is crumbling for 40 years now? will we just sit here and watch it for another 40 years?

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Oh, much before 40 years has the more or less free liberal structures been crumbling. In the USA it might be argued that when they signed out of a democracy into incorporation in 1871(?) that was the beginning. Or when Rockefeller took over the education system in the USA in 1902. (When the Brits developed industrialised public education to ensure a compliant workforce in the early mid 1800s). Perhaps it was when Rockefeller took over university health education while destroy alternative schools. The CIA planned assassination of JFK and media cover-up. Or... the signs have been with us.

H.L. Mencken cautioned against this. Orwell cautioned against this. Hannah Arndt and many many others. Their cautions were the canary in the mine and most of us too busy to attend with the required understanding to understand what was being cautioned against.

For me, my perception in the 1980s that the media was totally corrupt, that the universities in the humanities were, using a contemporary adjective woke, were canaries. At the time I didn't have enough understanding to understand what the canaries were warming us was coming. Too more fully wake me up took the plandemic, when the planners with hubris and the confident delusion of most MBAs, took off their gloves and announced, just like MBAs, their agenda with cute banal or uplifting names. LoL! I went through that in the late 2000s into mid 2010s, with project names like 'Chipmunk' to outsource logistics and destroy any semblance of functionality; 'Compass' to unify billing systems after mergers, a 300 million dollar project at the expense of the engineering department; etc. Yup. Same strategies, same effectiveness.

So... a blessing or a curse? Project covid was the big wake up. Now with awareness we can put our imagination, our thinking, our actions towards building a different paradigm, not the deluded 'reset' thing, which is, of course, just a concentrated form of the last few thousand years. Fascinating.

I don't know if it will be 40 years before we have crumbled into complete dust and ash. I suspect that crumble we will, though. And then the survivors have the opportunity to imagine a different way of being human supporting and being supported by planet earth, not corporate tyrannies bullying humans and earth.

Dostoyevsky had a great description of the 'Just this is it now' situation:

Receiving their bread from us [the oligarchs], the people will clearly see that we take the bread from them to give it back to them and they will be only too glad to have it so as it will deliver them from their greatest anxiety and torture–that of having to decide freely for themselves. Never was there anything more unbearable to the human race than personal freedom.

––The Grand Inquisitor

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🗨 The masses have never thirsted after truth.[...] Whoever can supply them with illusions is easily their master; whoever attempts to destroy their illusions is always their victim. ~~Gustave Le Bon (approx coeval with Dostoyevsky)

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Yup. Perfecto.

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Bingo.

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The quick wealth of financial engineering vs building real things of value corrupted many. We can see a proud company, Boeing, destroyed by bean counters who valued profit over solid products. Whether they are too big to fail is a worthy question. I don't know if Musk is ready for big airplanes but we need an organic capability.

The sad truth is that pursuit of wealth ends up hurting many ordinary folk but those who did the deeds go unpunished in our current system. Not clear if Congress is clever enough to control the modern greed given their participation. But the government taking from the rich isn't a good answer either - we need to starve that beast.

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Note the quality of prose mere 3 centuries old 😔

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Yup. Have you read Umberto Eco's fiction? Wow!

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Right?!

If you want some of the best prose of the last 70 years you should read "The Name Of The Wind" by Patrick Rothfuss.

It's "High-fantasy Academia", but I have yet to recommend it to someone who didn't love it.

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It's sort of an effortless "purple prose". Beautiful imo

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Many years ago I read the ideas of Epictetus. He provides excellent commentary on our society. He died around 180AD I think. I kept saying out loud, 'OMG! He's talking about us, now.' I'm surprised that seemingly so few reference to him.

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Bravo, mate!

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Timing. Only yesterday I discovered that Nina Jankowitz (aka Mary Poppins of Disinformation) has blocked me, even tho we’ve never interacted. I posted the observation on twitter and a heaps of my followers found they were blocked also, by this complete stranger.

https://twitter.com/dystopian_du/status/1641716068728336385?s=46

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Did you ever see the movie "Jay & Silent Bob strike back"? The were comic artists who when they got haters dissing them went on a road trip to confront them at their houses. A bit like what Steve Kirsch is doing to pro covid jab narrative proponents in the CDC, FDA, heath care admins and politicians these days. Nina can be made famous for her actions with exposure, too.

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How do you compensate for something like this Rebekah? I’m rarely on Twitter. But when I do have the time to spend browsing, I depend on the "belief" that I’m searching a level playing field. I’m someone who is looking for a variety of opinions on many subjects. That this happened to you is not making me want to look for those opinions on Twitter. Or any social media outlet for that matter. It’s very discouraging.

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Just checked, and I’m blocked too. We must be on someone’s block list. Does anyone know how to remove a blocklist that you joined at some point? I joined one a while back, that was supposed to be blocking troll accounts that like to report people and get them banned. But it also blocks some tweets that I would like to see, so I end up having to unblock them occasionally. I just looked at my twitter account, and I can’t find where this list I joined is, or how to remove it from my account.

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I bet she just ran the script/app on the likes of a really popular conservative post, or one that really offended her. No enough people know who i am for me to be on a list & I'm blocked, too. Read the conditions on some of these tools on this link below. There's nothing u can do to get around it. The policy needs to be changed so it doesn't affect anything except the communication between the blocker/blockee.

https://twtblocktools.carrd.co/

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I get that I can’t do anything about removing myself from other people’s block lists, and I too am not important enough to have been singled out for blocking. But what I was wondering about was how to stop automatically blocking others based on a list I joined at some point. I can’t find it anywhere on my twitter account.

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I'm not familiar with lists u join that automatically block others, but if u are looking for the list itself, using an Android phone, click on your profile avatar on the top left, it opens a menu that says:

Profile

Twitter blue

Topics

Bookmarks

Lists

So, it's possible the list would be under "lists" in that menu. I don't have anything listed under my lists, only, "discover new lists", as I've never created or joined a list, personally. Worst case u could just remove urself from the list there. Maybe someone else can be more helpful with that subject, if that doesn't help,, sorry.

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Apr 2, 2023
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🤣

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Sorry so many of you are so addicted to the abuse from silicon valley. And no, that stripper doesn't really like you either.

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But she said she wanted to get to know me

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Great to have actual transparency into the Twitter algorithm, that - surprise, surprise - confirms what many suspected. I'd love to have a similar view inside Google and FB which will likely show the same behavior (or worse) taking place. I've found Google in particular to be highly suspicious. They seem to play games with the algorithm where preferred povs get priority, regardless of where they would organically rank.

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Google censors. So do Bing, DuckDuckGo, and the others.

The one search engine that seems to not censor is the Russian Yandex. Yeah, it's Russian, and yeah, one has no idea what info they keep. But for uncemsored Yandex is da bomb.

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What I'm curious about are the actual details, like what we are finding out now regarding Twitter. The fact that Twitter was explicitly using political affiliation in their system is pretty eye opening. Would love to see what Google and FB use.

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What about Brave and ResultHunter

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…and waaay more than that!

They are “the man behind the curtain.”

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Then, they just change the terms to make it sound normal. That's what jack did for years to guarantee that Twitter didn't "shadowban". 🤦🏼‍♂️

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The way it always should have been on all social media: People should argue a point on its merits and those that are just obnoxious only reveal themselves for who they are and can be ignored. Or, sites like Utoob can just go back to LOL cat videos where our favorite bad cat would become a millionaire

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Can’t stop the signal, Mal.

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shiny.

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The other solution is for all reasonable, thinking people to get and stay off Twitter. And for more people to recognize it for what it is, a propaganda machine masquerading an an open discussion forum.

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That feels like quitting to me

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Yeah I see that. I never really got into Twitter so.. easy for me to give it up.

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Yeah I totally get what you're saying. I don't participate in any social media except here on the Stacks...and I didn't even start that until I turned 50.

Shit I barely have time to follow Gato, Bray, SimComm, eugyppius and Igor let alone Twitter. So for me I feel like that's where my time is best spent learning and maybe providing some encouragement where I can.

I guess all I'm saying is; imo we do need people to represent people like us (who don't participate) or then we allow the haters of truth to write the records of history.

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Agreed.

Just do away with those algo's, period.

If you don't want to hear what someone has to say, block them. But that block should have *zero* consequences for the blockee.

I am 100% OK with the pay-for-a-blue-check strategery. No problema. And only allow those blue checks to have any influence, no matter how minor, at all. You don't pay? You have no influence.

Open the game up, and may better combatants "win..."

I pray for a censor-free world...

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This is disturbing. EGM, since you seem to have Elon’s ear, perhaps you can get him to consider implementing your recommendations.

I had someone report (https://twitter.com/RichardMRosent1/status/1641886298347655171) that Twitter was blocking them from posting #MistakesWereNotMade.

“Mistakes Were NOT Made” (https://margaretannaalice.substack.com/p/mistakes-were-not-made-an-anthem-57a) was trending for three days straight, so it appears they are now taking precautions to suppress it.

A YouTube user also reported that Google Canada has deployed its algorithms to alter the search results for “Mistakes Were NOT Made” (https://twitter.com/MargaretAnnaAl1/status/1639834379391496192).

I guess that means we’re doing something right and true :-)

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Among your many virtues is you have all the right enemies.

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Isn't that the only way to judge people? MAA and I share enemies - therefore she is my friend. Or something like that!

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A good rule of thumb, but rather fraught with danger if one is a leftist.

"The best thing about socialists is they eventually start shooting each other."

~ Yuri Maltsev

Requiescat in pace.

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😹🙏

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You're spot on, Gato.

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I don't get why people decided it's necessary to deplatform or have someone censored, on a large scale. When you can just mute, unfollow or block censor unwanted content from your own feed. The vengefulness of people wanting to obliterate anything they find "offensive", just shows what morons they are. The groups must be making a killing doing this. Someone has to be paying these groups to do this... Elon knowingly bought into a hornets nest. The legal team must be working 24/7 keeping up with what's constitutional or not regarding our freedom of speech...... or maybe not.😒

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I was an early adopter with Twitter-- fascinated by its novelty, at first. I walked away. The algos & etc are just ick. Now I bookmark or subscribe to the blogs of those writers I want to read. No SM intermediation.

Hearts to you, gato.

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In which wars did we need to create a code to bypass the enemy? How quickly people forget. Does your government look at you as the enemy or are you seeing government control over speech as our enemy? Having a communication degree that many people snickered at and wondered what the importance was and now whining that their speech is being suppressed. Full circle. However, I went to college at a time when they offered a class on propaganda and used news clips as case studies. The UC system was less woke then.

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im not giving elon a cent till he has fixed the bugs

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They’re features

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theyre legacy features from the woke era that need some bug spray

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Yeah, this has backed up Elon's descriptions of the Twitter codebase as just one giant collection of interconnected and poorly documented narrative control systems. I'm not even sure this is salvageable, it may be easier if they just start over, as the baseline functionality of Twitter isn't particularly complicated.

Either way, don't expect this to be solved any time soon, at best they'll be able to band-aid over the control systems for the next year or so while figuring out how to get it cleaned up or start it over. Don't be surprised if changes are slow coming, either. That's not an indictment of Elon, it's an indictment of the rubes and corrupt criminals in the public and private spheres who made this garbage in the first place.

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