
Now I have been censored by Facebook - dragonbonheur
https://medium.com/@0rf/now-i-have-been-censored-by-facebook-ac1ffe094476
======
StanislavPetrov
This is the inevitable result when you erode free speech. Many will say
Facebook is private and therefore free speech is not an issue here (an issue
up for debate), but the concept is the same. Once you start banning speech for
any reason, you no longer have free speech, and the wealthy and powerful will
find ways to ban any speech that they don't like. All the people advocating
that we ban "hate speech", criminalize "cyberbullying" or otherwise ban speech
they find offensive are useful idiots to the powerful interests that want to
eliminate free speech for purposes of control. Nothing is as central to the
concept of a free and open society then free speech and free expression.

------
memracom
What makes you think that Facebook is censoring you rather than an employee of
Facebook who is being paid by somebody else? This is a classic technique of
subversion. You don't have to control an organization or get their leaders on
your side. You simply get some of your own people into that organization in
jobs that have the powers that you want to exercise.

These people are sleepers (like the Manchurian candidate) who wait for
instructions. To keep them on your side you pay them extra above and beyond
the Facebook salary. And when you activate them to do your bidding, you pay
them a bonus.

From the outside, it looks like the organization(Facebook) is unfair but in
reality it has been subverted.

So, is there any evidence that this is anything other than subversion by a 3rd
party political organization?

Free speech is clearly not the issue since there is no free speech in America
today. Anyone who looks objectively at the media and free speech over a time
scale in decades, will have noticed the steady erosion of free speech since
the beginning of the Cold War.

Speech has been "captured" by powerful elites. What you see as an assault on
free speech is simply one of those elites exercising one of their levers of
power. The freedom of speech was already lost when those elites got away with
capturing speech.

What people today see as "free speech" is only a phantom that is allowed to
exist because it covers the real capture of speech. But whenever that phantom
of free speech threatens to have a "material" impact, then the owners of the
USA, clamp down and beat it back to a dull humming noise.

As Marie Antoinette said, let them eat cake. Or Juvenal who said about 2000
years ago, let them have bread and circuses.

~~~
andybak
This explanation feels much more plausible to me. Either that or it's just a
cock-up. If it was a command from on high then it's the dumbest thing ever as
it was obviously going to be noticed.

------
jomamaxx
As much as we all may loathe Trump - they do this to him every day, all day.

I recently had to do some video editing related technology work - we used
Trump speeches as samples.

Watching a bunch of Trump speeches, none of which I have ever seen in full
(because I generally don't care about him) - I found that his rhetoric was
pretty normal actually. He wasn't bombastic or crazy. Neither were his
positions.

But reading the CNN headlines every day - you'd think the guy was Hitler. They
took a lot of things out of context.

Now - maybe Trump is 'too dangerous' or whatever to be President - I don't
know - I'm not American and I don't have that much of an opinion on it
politically, other than he does say some things that are a little scary ...

That said - the means by which information is edited is just as powerful as
creating the script oneself.

You don't need to put words in someone's mouth - all you need to do is
selectively show the words you want to create a narrative.

And of course - this happens all across the spectrum, not just with more
extreme candidates.

~~~
memracom
If you've ever been interviewed by the media, you will be shocked at what they
publish. Distortion of the message is ingrained even when the topic is totally
non-political.

The media is mostly about doing a "rush-job". Hurry up and get it out.

------
rjeli
See also - swaths of conservative Facebook groups disappearing, Twitter
pulling hashtags critical of Clinton, Reddit taking action to limit the
presence of Pro-Trump posts. Regardless of my political affiliation, I am
infuriated that both sides of the aisle are being silenced for speaking
against the corporate-supported establishment.

------
amiga-workbench
Why people expect anything different from Facebook & Twitter utterly eludes
me, it takes all of 15 minutes to spin up your own server and host whatever
content you fancy.

Locking most of the discourse on the web into two or three private platforms
severely limits the kinds of discussion that will be tolerated.

~~~
memracom
There is open source software called [http://pump.io/](http://pump.io/) that
does most of what you want in a social network. If you are technically
inclined, then yes it is easy to set up a server and run this. But even if you
are not technically inclined, there is such a large population of people who
have these kind of skills nowadays that if you search through your circle of
friends, you will find them.

Talk to them, ask them to set up a server for you. Offer to manage it on
behalf of your circle of friends, and go for it.

P.S. nobody says you have to have only one server and one circle of friends.
You can set up a separate one for your circle of political acquaintances too.
This is what the web was created for, not to make a small number of new
national networks that dominate everything.

