Over the past couple of months, my time-line on Twitter has crashed repeatedly causing the enigmatic — Try Again — message to appear.
At times I ponder whether this has a deeper philosophical meaning for my life, but I usually put it down to a Wi-Fi glitch or whatever! That said, this glitch has been curiously coincidental with the recent censorship happening throughout Anti-Social Media. That leaves me with a niggling suspicion that my feed is being manipulated by the ‘Algo’ — the master Twitter algorithm. And, “Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t after you!” (Catch-22.)
Laura Loomer is a good example of Cancel Culture in action. The clip below shows Loomer interrupting a US Senate hearing to harangue Jack Dorsey, CEO of Twitter.
Loomer is a rather extreme activist but after the Senate issue, she found herself banned from Twitter; Facebook; Instagram; PayPal; Venmo; GoFundMe; Cash App; Periscope; Medium; Uber; Uber-Eats; Lyft; Teespring; and Chase Bank Online Banking. You may not agree with anything Loomer says, but this sort of crushing response should worry ordinary folk.
Regular people have been cancelled over just one errant post or ‘inappropriate’ ❤️Like ❤️. Recently, Jon Holbrook, a Barrister in the UK, was expelled from his chambers because the Mob was offended by a short Tweet in which he opining about a teenager opposing her school’s dress/hair code. Again, you might not agree with Holbrook’s take on hair, but his subsequent comments about Cancel Culture are on the mark:
“A democracy cannot function when the protagonists can speak freely whilst the antagonists are muzzled. The woke may think they are lovely people who just want us all to be nice to one another. But they are not lovely people, as my targeting shows: they are intolerant proselytisers who want to silence those who challenge them. They seek to deploy, not the jackboot of totalitarianism, but the cancel culture of intolerance. In the name of democracy, they must not succeed.”
Censorship in these platforms must have been occurring for a very long time when so many felt comfortable in removing the account of a sitting President of the United States, all at the same time. The rest of us Plebs must take that as a real warning.
In the video below, Jack Dorsey advised his staff that the action which removed Trump’s account will go “much bigger” and “much longer!” Yowzer!
Trump has also discovered that at least two investment banks will terminate their long-standing business relationships with him. Not only is he socially ‘de-platformed’ but the former President of the US is being financially de-platformed too.
TDS has become so extreme that there are calls to digitally erase Trump’s cameo appearance in Home Alone II! This has uncanny similarities to Stalin’s erasure of people who had fallen out of favour, a.k.a. sent to a Gulag or killed. (TDS = Trump Derangement Syndrome.)
Internet Censorship
Twitterers saw clear evidence of account cancellation with Trump. Most Pro-Life sites are still active but many noticed a marked reduction of followers and believe ‘The Purge’ is happening.
Twitter put warning labels on Tweets if they perceived a need for “Fact-Checking” or are “misinformation.” Curiously most every label went on conservative and Right-Wing posts! These warnings were visible but they are designed to bias the reader and might allow the Algo’ to ‘Shadow Ban’ those posts.
“Shadow Banning” “…is the act of blocking or partially blocking a user or their content from an online community so that it will not be readily apparent to the user that they have been banned. For instance, shadow banned comments posted to a blog or media website will not be visible to other persons accessing that site from their computers.”
Censorship on the Internet can be done by governments, ‘backbone’ equipment operators, Internet Service Providers (ISP’s) Certificate Authorities and application service providers (e.g., Twitter) amongst others. (Wikipedia has a detailed article on how it can be done.)
Uganda v. USA
The unilateral censorship of the sitting President of the United States of America was put into comedic relief when the Twitter Global Public Policy Team had the gall to lecture the Ugandan government about Internet Censorship during their recent election! Tucker Carlson’s delightful commentary is below.
Pro-Life Censorship
One can definitely understand there should be limits on the posting of very graphic images, but frequently those standards are applied unilaterally.
In a 2014 article in The Public Discourse, Richard M. Doerflinger discusses the results of a study published by the Guttmacher Institute (a “pro-abortion-rights think tank” previously affiliated with Planned Parenthood.) He concluded;
“Maybe this is all pretty simple after all: if you want fewer abortions, oppose abortion; if you want lots of abortions, promote abortion. And maybe more Americans are learning what abortion is: a violent act against life, a grief for women, a corruption of medicine, and an embarrassment to a civilized society. Education to further advance that understanding should be accompanied by positive steps to help women at risk of abortion, and to help health-care professionals and policymakers address these women’s real needs.
In short, pro-life Americans should rejoice at the good news, and redouble their efforts to help pregnant women and their unborn children. Notwithstanding the spin doctors of the abortion industry, we are seeing some light at the end of that long dark tunnel.”
That might partly support the use of the very graphic image of the human remains after a 15-week abortion below, but I understand that at some point this image was censored by Twitter.
(It can be found in the tweets from Created Equal.)
Other graphic images are allowed to stay. For example, there are many graphic images on Twitter from War Zones. The Tweet below has an image from the My Lai Massacre during the Vietnam War.
Even very benign Pro-Life accounts have been cancelled. The Pro-Life movie, Unplanned, had its account blocked by Twitter, on the weekend of its release coincidentally.
In comparison, a quick search for R-rated movies brought up the account of “Good Boys.”
The warning on the DVD includes: “violence; strong crude sexual content, drug and alcohol material, and language throughout.” This site advertises the fact that the DVD has “unrated deleted scenes.” I have not seen this movie (nor likely to!) but wonder how exactly ‘Tween’ stars can participate in a ‘graphic’ R-rated movie without suffering trauma or abuse? It is no surprise to me that the Good Boys movie site has not been blocked by Twitter.
Baby Ultrasounds are “inflammatory…”
Live Action, a Pro-Life site, has suffered censorship from several platforms including: Twitter, Pinterest, YouTube, Facebook and TikTok.
“In 2017, Twitter restricted Live Action from advertising on the platform, flagging Live Action's content as "sensitive."
In June 2019, Pinterest permanently banned Live Action for spreading "harmful misinformation, [which] includes medical misinformation and conspiracies that turn individuals and facilities into targets for harassment or violence," …Pinterest had restricted its content by placing it on a list of "blocked pornography sites…"
Facebook fact-checkers marked as "false" two Live Action videos that stated "abortion is never medically necessary."
On January 30, 2020, video-sharing social networking service TikTok banned Live Action's channel "due to multiple Community Guidelines violations" after the group posted a video of a woman choosing between a pro-life and pro-choice pill, a meme derived from the film The Matrix. By the next day, TikTok restored Live Action's account, calling the block a "mistake" based on "human error by a moderator."
Twitter blocked Live Action’s posts of normal baby ultrasounds (above.) “The company said that our content violated its sensitive advertising content policy, which prohibits "inflammatory or provocative content which is likely to evoke a strong negative reaction."”
Birdwatch
If things are bad now, just wait for Twitter’s new ‘surveillance system’: Birdwatch.
The pilot participants will write posts to identify and to rebut what they consider to be misinformation. Twitter said it expects to have 1,000 to 100,000 unpaid “Birdwatchers.” I’ll bet there will not be one centrist or right-wing Birdwatcher (…or at least not for long!) Something about this censorship harkens back to the public denunciations of the French Revolution and the Cultural Revolution in China.
Cancel Culture
My apologies to all the non-Catholic, Pro-Life/Whole-Lifers for using the limiting catchy alliteration — Cancel Culture cancels Catholics — in the title. It should have read:
Cancel Culture is a threat to all who protect LIFE from conception to natural death.
WARNING: Big-Tech has no forgiveness. Please protect yourselves when on Anti-Social Media. It might be inconvenient to lose access to Twitter or Facebook, but it is devastating to lose your banking or job etc. Be aware that every keystroke, however well-intentioned, can come back to hurt you or your family.
The only catholics (small c) who get a pass from Big-Tech are those who have sold out. Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House of Representatives in America, pontificated from the podium about her “Catholicism.”
In this clip a reporter asked ‘do you hate the President [Trump]’ and her response is to use her religion as a shield, even though she has rejected fundamental tenets of Catholicism by supporting elective abortion at every stage of pregnancy and infanticide after a failed abortion.
President Biden presents himself as “a devout Catholic” yet within a week of inauguration has signed executive orders supporting genocidal levels of abortion in America and around the world.
Many Saints quietly survived, opposed and prevailed through worse adversity! Occasionally they were left with no other choice other than to make the ultimate sacrifice for their belief. A hero of mine is St. Thomas More who was an accomplished Catholic politician (perhaps not accomplished enough?) bureaucrat and author, during the English Reformation.
In 1535 he was truly “Cancelled” after refusing to swear the Oath of Supremacy to Henry VIII. His last words before being beheaded, were:
"I die the King's good servant, and God's first."
Dr. Kevin Hay.
Kevin is a UCD grad and a rural Family Doctor in Alberta, Canada.
You can follow him on Twitter @kevinhay77. (Though mostly on hiatus at present.)