by VICTORIA TAFT
Twitter censors the president of the United States of America for making claims media tech giants deem are “in dispute.” People on Facebook are prevented from sharing stories about election fraud because the ones-and-zeros working in “content moderation” say claims in a lawsuit aren’t true.
Everything’s racist, sexist, iffy, and off-putting for tech’s child content-moderators, who apparently believe that media is made for censoring. They believe they are the firewall protecting those dumb adults from bad information because they know what’s best.
And conservatives are responding by getting out.
More conservative Twitter, Google, YouTube and Facebook users are like businesses in California. Their signs are still up, but they expanded somewhere else.
Parler, MeWe, Rumble, and Gab are blowing up in subscriptions.
It used to be that standing against censorship was noble, but the legacy news media have now decided there’s something sinister about this wave of tech refugees seeking a better, more honest, place to call home.
A USA Today story imputes selfish and sinister motives to the sudden popularity of these new social media platforms.
Conservatives increasingly are congregating on social media outlets designed specifically for people who think like them. https://t.co/CBg1RQA11t
— USA TODAY (@USATODAY) November 11, 2020
Without irony, people observing the exodus claim it must be because conservatives want to “stay in their own echo chambers,” and surely there’s truth to wanting to be with like-minded people. That’s why the Left loves legacy social media. They run it, contour content to their way of thinking, and censor, report, and hector people who don’t think like them. This may sound like a Leftist love-fest, and it is, but being a conservative on these social media sites is like going to dinner at your sister’s, where she thinks it’s perfectly OK to call you a ho because you disagree with her.
With no self-reflection, a reporter at USA Today constructs a narrative about the exodus claiming it’s all conservatives’ fault because they’re closed-minded and extremist.
America’s crisis of political segregation – we increasingly don’t live alongside, associate with or even marry people who think differently from us – is increasingly leading conservatives to congregate together on social media outlets designed specifically for people who think like them.
The recent rise of Parler – as well as other social media alternatives that appeal primarily to conservatives and that got their start largely by attracting the far right – raises the specter of further political polarization through digital means. Parler and others, like MeWe and Gab, are gaining momentum with a promise not to censor their users for behavior that might violate the policies of their rivals.
But, much like the social media site Gab, Parler has quickly attracted the extremist crowd in addition to self-proclaimed center-right conservatives like Read. Groups from the far-right Proud Boys, which includes large numbers of white supremacists, to heavily-armed anti-government militias have gathered on the site to spread conspiracy theories, racist memes and false claims of election fraud.
Leftists believe Donald Trump is a Russian secret agent, Hillary would have been elected but for Russian Facebook ads, the black man running Proud Boys is a white nationalist, and Brett Kavanaugh was a serial rapist who gave out red cups with roofies. But, sure, conservatives are the weirdos.
“I think it’s inevitable that we’ll see the rise of conservative, separate or distinct, social media,” said Jonathan Rauch, a senior fellow and U.S. political scholar at the Brookings Institution, a Washington-based think tank. “It’s only a question of where and how fast it will form and how extreme and partisan it will become.”
The mainstream press and their allies in academia and think-tank-world believe Leftist beliefs are the standard by which all other thoughts are measured. That’s how far they’ve moved. All other thought is “extreme and partisan.”
Or this guy might be right. Everyone’s welcome to these newer sites.
Anyone is welcome on these sites lol if you hear free speech zone and automatically think conservatives they will take that as a compliment 😘
— Charlton Martin II (@CharltonII1318) November 11, 2020
USA Today reports that Parler was the most downloaded app on Tuesday. Their user base has nearly doubled in a week. A Facebook group urging people to leave the social site on November 13 has nearly half a million members.
Instead of taking this as a market clue from Facebook’s “customers” (remember, users aren’t customers, they are the product in these legacy social media sites), the tech companies believe they are right and their users are wrong.
Whats his name, the head Twit, came to a senate hearing looking like he just crawled out of some cave in some shithole country to testify he made a mistake locking out the Biden laptop story but the Post remained blocked from posting for another week or so.
Let them keep their totalitarian BS platform and watch it go the way of my space.
Both Parler and Gab have been having a tough time keeping accounts with normal web site businesses because the big tech keeps closing them down.
Gab couldn’t get an app thru Apple.
PayPal refused to allow people to support Gab or Parler thru their system.
Even GoFundMe refuses to allow fund raising for Gab or Parler.
Still both Gab and Parler have more than doubled in numbers just this month!
I just joined Parler but had been with Gab since it’s opening month.
Just a few clicks to block certain oft-used hate speech terms and you are never bothered by the racists who are also free to use those platforms.
Both sites have a lot to commend themselves.
I especially like Parler’s notification system that allows me to get faster-than-TV news coverage of breaking stories by those members who are breaking the stories.
People like President Trump, his press secretary, Senators, Congressmen, and top reporters and pundits.
@kitt:
looked like he was high on something? cia has some wonderful drugs. movie “Jacobs Ladder” is real and continues even today.
Which, as it turns out, is exactly what blocking, censoring, and “fact checking” is trying to do on Twitter and Facebook.
I’m moving to MeWe. I just discovered how to transfer all my photos on Facebook to my computer. At some point in the near future, I will abandon Facebook. I was never on Twitter, but got on Parler, to see what it was.
So far on MeWe, I notice that there is a notable absence of liberal influences. Of course, this makes logical sense; the people on MeWe are fleeing the persecution on Facebook for being conservative; why would liberals flee? Since what liberals want is to smother all other views, why would they leave Facebook, where their echo-chamber is being perfected, to go to MeWe where the discouraging word is?
If Twitter, Facebook and the rest of the liberal media had not suppressed the Biden laptop story, Biden would have lost, fraud or not.
No, the purpose of these platforms (whether it began that way or not) is propaganda. They don’t care about the users; it is only important to indoctrinate them, not “serve” their demands.
As I have said, my brother-in-law, the husband of my wife’s twin sister (who unfriended me and her twin sister) and who has unfriended everyone that is not a rabid liberal like himself and branded them all racists and Nazis, sent out an email asking for all us pagans to pledge to “work together” from here on out. Yeah, they just don’t get it. If only they could stand on a chair or something and look upon themselves.
I can’t decide if I’ll just leave Facebook or go out with a real BANG, posting something really good to get me banned.
As Clueless as they can get these liberal journalists
Vice President Henry A. Wallace, April 9, 1944:
@Greg: Boy, did he have YOU GUYS pegged!
@Greg: Good quote, lets look at the democrats wanting to monopolize healthcare system. Pick and choose energy production winners, but very little to do with the subject of the thread you dumb bastids freaking there are places on the internet that have freedom of speech and are not locked into facebook twitter and google.
Henry A. Wallace was FDR’s Vice President, after leaving the Republican Party in 1924.