382 Comments

Calling someone out on their censorship is hate speech.

Got it.

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I was granted political asylum in the U.S. due to the persecution I suffered for my work as a journalist. When I see this Meta totalitarian BS or hear -- 'Will anybody be able to police what Carlson says?' -- as it was said today by the despicable thought police enforcers in Goebbelsian media (a discussion on NBC with that ex-CNN clown, Brian Stelter, a sniveling weasel who was awarded for his work with the Walter Shorenstein Media and Democracy Fellowship at the CIA recruiting Harvard Kennedy School), I feel a bit deflated.

But then, I realized that Tucker Carlson's announcement on Twitter has 104 million views at the time of writing this, that Matt Taibbi has a wide, devoted audience that supports all of his work with hard-earned money, and that there are many of us who understand how precious and irreplaceable the First Amendment has been for the U.S. and how crucial it is for our society's future.

I believe that there are enough of us who would endure this wholesale attack on our freedoms and prevail against all those ghouls in the 'Democratic' party, all those CIA, DEA, NSA, Google, Meta, and other spooks that hate us, the people, with all their might. Screw them all. I, for one, did not immigrate to the United States of America, no matter its flaws throughout history, to see it Sovietize and turn into North Korea. The freedom is worth fighting for, no matter what.

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founding

I'm glad you're here. The people who appreciate what we stand to lose are those who have first-hand experience of what life is like when those things so many Americans take for granted are gone.

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My parents, like you, escaped totalitarianism. Thanks for this.

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Good post, but when you say "Sovietized," I hope you aren't including the Russian Federation, which has freedom of speech. Go there and see for yourself.

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By "Sovietized" I meant "Sovietized," almost like Gabriel García Márquez whose rooster in "One Hundred Years of Solitude" symbolized a rooster. A smiley here.

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Thank you for your comment. I went to University in Barcelona, Spain when Francisco Franco ruled the Iberian Peninsula. Censorship was law -- we could not speak Catalan or Basque in class...Certain poetry, artists and historians were banned. Now, the United States shares these same fascist values? Matt does give hope!

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Once Biden's CBDC is fully functional one might not be able to $$support real journalist. For sure we won't when caught in the GR.

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I was black-pilled all the way back during the Al Gore concession speech. "Damn, they're all the same," I realized. Now that I am so pissed and certain that there are millions of equally pissed people, I believe that their fascism might be stopped.

They've lost any resemblance of dignity or humanity. They're pushing it too far. Unless they kill us all because of that bloody money-laundering operation in Ukraine we'd get the chance. Unless we let them go away with everything of course.

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A Uniparty controls all the levers of power. Just watch what happens if a red state governor or legislature gets to out of hand. Justice was jettisoned by Bill Clinton, Bush43, Obama and now Biden has a hot red glowing rod that’s wielded against the ‘pissed’. All we have left is bibles and bullets.

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STASI and the communist party in the DDR had all the power. 30% of the people snitched on another 70%. And it crumbled overnight. We're approaching that stage of decay. If there's a place in the world that still has a chance, that's the U.S. no matter how bleak it looks today.

Trust me, I've seen hell 100s of times worse than our current nightmares.

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founding

I don't doubt your perspective at all. But, Question: In those days, was the US of A a place of aspiration? The US of A today is not considered worthy of anything, per the people bringing it down.

Michelle O famously said the first time she was ever proud of the US of A, was when her man won a nomination to be its leader. Yeah, that's who I want in charge.

Our freedom now exists on the edge of a knife. Equality Before the Law? The hundreds of thousands coming here illegally may respect the human traffickers, but they don't respect the rest of us and our law. If they don't have to even pretend, why should they ever buy into the concept of America?

Neither do the people facilitating the surge. Which includes the whole hierarchy of the Democratic Party. What is happening at our southern border is the take-down of the rule of law, of respect for this country. So sorry, the America that existed before has been literally overrun. It's not about skin color, it's about buying into respect and some values.

Finally, Ukraine. Apparently now that the country has been made into a wasteland, it's no longer photogenic. Watching the coronation last weekend (again, yes I did), I wondered what it would look like when First Dr. Lady Jill arrived at the ceremony; who would accompany her? Turns out one of Hunter's daughters (not the Arkansas one) was her escort, and (the point of this story is) they appeared to me to be wearing the colors of Ukraine! Am I wrong? Maybe just paranoid.

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Wow, you may be right. The government will control all our spending and stop payment to any reporter we like.

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Not if I have anything to say about it.

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Right. Because anything they hate can be deemed hate speech.

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Oh, so THAT's what they mean by "hate." It all makes sense now.

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founding

Revision: ANYTHING can be hate speech. I suspect the Republican Party will be so categorized. So much for an opposition, as meager as it was.

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When they started passing hate speech laws, I (facetiously) thought, now the Muslims will be protected. Somehow it didn't work out that way.

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The GOP establishment has people on the inside, but if it's taken over by America First populists, you are correct, it will become the next target of the censorship industrial complex.

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Oh yeah man, haven’t you heard? Only Fascists want freedom of expression!

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There's good in everyone.

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While any of us could point to more than a few people whose good was/is really hard to see, I like your sentiment. It aligns with the one about talking with our neighbors, even/especially those with whom we disagree, instead of the back and forth sniping on social media.

There is a lot of apocalyptic commentary in the comments space today. (I am especially amused by the "fascism!" "hate!" exclamations of some of those who identify as conservative, because for decades and decades the political right has been colored by those descriptions, among others.)

I don't think the end is nigh; I don't think Matt will be locked up. There are threats to free speech, yes, as there have been for a long time. And there have been moments of crisis, and people thought the end was nigh then too: Vietnam, Watergate, Iran Contra, blowjobgate, stupid wars, torture and spying on Americans, impeachments after impeachments, a pandemic, and now another stupid war of choice. Maybe stupider than Iraq. True, not a lot of American casualties in Ukraine (yet), but getting in a dust-up with Iraq is quite different than one with a nuclear power that has proved to be as trigger-happy as the US.

Through all those things, we came through with the republic intact. As we will this time. While there are certainly threats, the public has heard all those threats (and more) before, and we're still here. With the apocalyptic talk, a boy-who-cried-wolf scenario is possible.

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Nope.

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So is being sarcastic about it, or calling attention to it in any way. This is called an infinite regress, and there's no appeal.

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Thanks man, I learned a new term today. Sincere comment, looked it up for other examples.

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Maybe it’s “malinformation”: technically true but counter to the approved narrative.

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That's the worst kind. I once got a "lifetime" ban for that.

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May 10, 2023·edited May 10, 2023

I related this story to a friend on Facebook. I wrote, I found a old German Shepard riddled with worms and had three of my own, so now I had four. A neighbor over the fence told me only white trash has that many dogs. I told him from now on I was going to try and live up to the name and let my car rust in the driveway and never again will I mow my lawn. Facebook notified me that I should reconsider my statement, and at first I couldn't figure out why. When I thought about I realized it was white trash that made them see it as hate speech. Wasn't a nice word. Screw off Facebook. I changed nothing, but they left it alone.

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A few friends passed away....so, I have five dogs...not white trash, but love, commitment and lotsa trash to pick up!

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That's a great answer.

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It is impossible to go directly from hypocrisy to morality: patience.

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It's a bug. The auto-flagging system went haywire, it seems... people who hadn't even posted anything were dinged for "hate speech".

Feeling foolish yet?

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The only reason anyone would care about censorship is because they want to say hateful things. Good people have nothing to worry about. Now say a hundred hail Zuckerbergs as penance for your joke

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Kenny,

Are you kidding? Is it hateful to say I like Putin? ...or the US is the instigator of the Ukraine war because it's been gunning for a war with Russia for 30 years? ..or China has superior diplomacy compared to the US, which has zero? Yet these comments (which aren't hateful) can be censored by people afraid of dissent from the accepted narrative.

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? For real?? It's funnier if you think I was serious, so yeah. Meant every word of it.

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Facebook is beyond hope.

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I remember the congressional hearings after the election of Donald Trump where Zuckerberg was called on the carpet for not censoring ENOUGH.

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FB started out as an intelligence gathering machine and lives on as a censorship machine. Nothing good has ever come of it.

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I found out a while ago that you can’t share anything remotely controversial on there when my post of Nicholas Wade’s COVID lab-leak article got tagged as a conspiracy theory. (The tag was silently removed a week later after the same story was reported by the mainstream press.)

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When MSM gets persuaded something's true, that's the time to start becoming skeptical. There's always a deeper level of explanation possible, and MSM will invariably be the last to notice or give it credence.

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This can be very useful. Just take what they say and write and invert it. It works about 90% of the time. It's like having your own personal mole in the ministry, but a lot easier and safer.

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Actually it was a nerd stalker device.

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lol, right?! it’s a creep factory!! the worst thing ever.

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That was sick. They pretend it’s about antisemitism, but it’s actually about a whole lot of other stuff.

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Ironically, they DONT censor antisemitism if it comes from the far left, or Islamic “Palestinian” angles, only the Neo-Nazis.

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They actually came out with a policy that it was OK to praise Nazis as long as they were Ukrainian. Hey, you've got to take advantage of those free speech opportunities when they come your way, eh?

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I had to come up with a secret code post to get past the algorithms. I invite Racket News readers to see if they can find the real message I was sending with a recent Facebook post. If you give up, the answer is in the Reader Comments.

Send me a FB request and you can see how many "likes" and comments my recent Substack links got. Spoiler for my last piece: Zero.

https://billricejr.substack.com/p/i-created-a-secret-code-to-get-around

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founding

The sort of thing people living in the Soviet Union had to do for years, to fly under the radar. And samizdat.

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I think it might become more common in the future. I guess we can hand out pamphlets ... if we find a printer who will print them.

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clever! and carbs are terrible. messaging win on both levels.

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Thanks, Brook. Yes, I actually believe the message I wrote in my faux post.

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I’ve never had a Facebook account and can’t imagine why anyone consorts with the enemy. It’s always been a surveillance app designed to scrape your personal information and sell it to every spammer and crappy corporate advertiser in the world. Oh, and now we know they also conspire with “intelligence” agencies to screw us out of what little remains of our constitutional rights. Do the right thing and close your Facebook account today.

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I did it once. But my boomer buddies won't use anything else.

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And when was it not? Back when it was only addicting teenagers?

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I read somewhere that a bunch of mainstream media types complained about politics and such getting too much emphasis on FB. Then FB changes the algorithm so that photos of family and friends get more emphasis.

On one hand, it hurts those of us on Substack who share writings. OTOH, it's also hurting the mainstream media types.

I'd call it schadenfreude, except it's those of us who want to share our work elsewhere who are suffering.

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Censors gonna censor

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I'm just gonna shake, shake, shake, shake, shack, shake it off, shake it off, and post on stack

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They have to justify their existence.

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Burning in hell would accomplish the same goal from my perspective.

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You know you have got imperial attention when the old "hate speech" is trotted out.

So proud that with all of the failing, failed US institutions currently at work to stay the Unipolar imperial power, it is quite remarkable that they have the time to pay attention to "the racket".

Again! Great reporting/journalism here. Thrilled to get this kind of information into the hands of the public.

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Can't make this shit up.

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May 10, 2023·edited May 10, 2023

Interesting that entire groups of people are not to be denied. I was vaccine injured and can attest that it feels "hateful" to refuse to acknowledge how I was harmed, to pretend I don't exist and deny my experience.

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There's bad hate and good hate.

Is hating Muslims still OK? I'd better check.

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The powers that be are petrified of the red-pilled normie.

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It's not even being red pilled as much as discovering you are highly allergic to the blue ones to the point where they might kill you.

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Matt, thanks for persevering. The work you are doing is important and it makes me feel optimistic for my 1.5 and 6 mos. old granddaughters that there are people doing work like yours. (OK, well, a few people.) It's really important, it is why I (and many others) subscribe, and -- sooner or later -- the truth is going to win (OK, that last one is a leap of faith).

I don't post a thank you as often as I should - even when you are reporting bad news, you give me hope because at least someone is reporting real news. Keep at it!

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How long is it going to take this guy to realize what time it is? Yes, they are censoring you. Yes, they sent the IRS to your home, next time it will be the FBI. They are trying to burn the country to the ground.

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He's not a fool, he is just not saying the quiet part out loud yet, at least not on his Substack. I suggest you tune into his podcast with Walter Kirn if you don't already.

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Joe T is correct, if Matt said the quiet bit out loud, they were shut him down. It’s up to us to say it directly: “ something monstrous is taking place in America. The US government has begun enforcing martial law online.”

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Does anyone still use Facebook?

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Sadly I still do, as a way to stay in touch with old friends and family. I would move to a better platform in a heartbeat if they all did, too.

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founding

Maybe Post Office is a better way to go, at least it's not electronic.

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Attorneys still use snail mail. That should tell you something.

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It's more secure but is too damn inconvenient. Especially since they've started shutting down the post offices.

I lived in Japan. Post offices everywhere.

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And the only private form of communication left on earth, for now. Although DeJoy still in power over USPS. Because Joe lied again. Buy stamps, write letters , send greeting cards with photos, send packages.Support your local PO. Snail mail/ pace is a good thing.

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I just got their phone numbers and email addresses. The important ones stayed in touch. My life is way better since getting that site out of my life, even though there are some elements of it that I miss, namely a couple groups.

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Absolutely Not. I haven’t used them since it was leaked they were going to start activating my mic and camera to listen to my environment.

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Good for you fighting this. Facebook is incredibly bias and corrupt.

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We live in very strange times. Aside from the faithful who read Substack, Racket News and similar independent news, if you are one who only follows "traditional" media, you would have no idea what is going on. Believe me, I know quite a few. And the worst part is that when you alert them, they think you are nuts. Anything not in the "mainstream" is labeled white supremist, conspiratorial and/or Russian disinformation. What ever happened to critical thinking? Weren't journalists supposed to be suspicious by nature?

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"What ever happened to critical thinking? Weren't journalists supposed to be suspicious by nature?"

So 20th century.

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$$$$$$$$$$$ that's what happened. Getting to own the world is costly.

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The ranks of the red-pilled are growing. I meet a few more like-minded skeptics every week. Elon Musk's takeover of Twitter seems to have thrown a monkey wrench in the elites' plans.

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Yes, I've noticed that too. They're not spending nearly as much time as they did pre-Elon sitting around in their mansions and penthouse apartments stroking their pet minks and ferrets while pondering stock options and, undoubtedly, how best to exterminate the proles. Always a telltale sign of a troubled elite.

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Imagine being such a cringelord that you'd actually describe yourself as "red-pilled". The term immediately brings to mind the smell of unwashed ass-crack that must be filling your basement dwelling at this very moment. Equating that movement of dumbshits and crackpots with "skepticism" is an insult to skeptics.

"Musk's takeover of Twitter seems to have thrown a monkey wrench in the elites' plans."

Seems? Based on what? Literally nothing, if I had to guess.

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No more TV for you.

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Right, a few Substack columns and we're all up to speed on world events, not to mention getting the latest on who's fucking who, who's fucking us over, and who we should get busy fucking over before they get busy fucking us over.

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Don't you think it's a bit strange that you just happen to have found the *correct* news sources, and everyone around you who think's you're drinking crazy juice from the tap is just a misinformed dullard who can't be bothered to look for the truth? You don't see *any* other possibilities that might be more parsimonious and reasonable, like that you're drinking crazy juice from the tap?

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Turn off the television.

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??? I haven't watched broadcast or cable TV in years, except in waiting rooms and such.

What are you even trying to communicate here? You must understand it doesn't make you look very smart to just assume anyone you disagree with is brainwashed by the boob tube, right?

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Mainstream news.

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In your mind, "TV" and "mainstream news" are interchangeable concepts?

More importantly, just so I understand: you're saying that any news that isn't fringe news should be avoided? Do I have that right?

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May 14, 2023·edited May 14, 2023

You have the right to consume whatever you like. Matt is offering people a look behind the curtain and you are trying to convince everyone that it's just a figment of their imagination. Fair enough, but you can't expect to respond to as many comments as you do, with your belittling attitude, and not expect to be called a flaming a-hole.

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I put it up on Facebook and so far it is not censored. Maybe targeted to your account.

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founding

I was able to cut & paste it...but the "share" feature did not work.

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Sometimes you need to delete anything in the link after the ? That is used for tracking and it can cause problems. TWITTER will choke on links with tracking. If you want to prevent cross-platform tracking, good habit to get into.

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I just posted… we shall see! I have not been scolded in a few weeks!

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Ever since The Twitter Files exposed the cooperation between the Censorship Industrial Complex and big tech, platforms like Meta can no longer dodge the First Amendment by relying the argument that because they're a private forum they can censor anything they want. They can and should be held to the same standards as their government sponsors.

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Which would mean removing their Section 230 protections, if I understand correctly.

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Exactly. And making the United States of America a co-defendant in any civil rights lawsuit against Meta.

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I think Matt is right. Let them censor all they want, but they must do so openly. If you are shadowbanned or otherwise de-emphasized, they must tell you.

Question: why isn't this done now? Because they don't want to lose you as a customer, that's why.

On Youtube 45% of political comments are shadowbanned. Tell me that that isn't heavyhanded censorship.

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It's censorship, and it's legal, and if you believe it's heavy-handed, you're free to go elsewhere. And until the laws are changed...

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If they censor openly they're admitting that their content isn't real and organic, and if it can be proven that the government is involved, they're also admitting civil rights violations

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"If they censor openly they're admitting that their content isn't real and organic"

That makes no sense. Virtually every platform -- even Elon's Twitter -- censors to some degree (open calls for violence, if nothing else).

"if it can be proven that the government is involved, they're also admitting civil rights violations"

This doesn't make sense either. The government is inherently "involved" in every social media company via its regulation of the internet, which is extensive and not new. You need some more specific concept than "involvement" to legally categorize Facebook as an agent of the government.

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Like emails from the FBI telling them what content to censor?

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Again, in order to make this point, you are presupposing that Facebook is an agent of the government.

The FBI can't make Facebook do anything without a warrant, and Facebook doesn't always comply. They both transparently benefit from the relationship. That's simply not evidence of wrongdoing or coercion.

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Yeah, or not. Nothing Facebook has done or is doing violates the First Amendment. You might not like it, but the Constitution isn't written and interpreted around what you like and don't like.

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I'm willing to bet that the reason your work is being censored by Meta has nothing to do with an algorithm. It's been deliberately blocked because it questions a certain narrative and because it's TRUE.

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Zuckerberg....Cuff 'im, Danno!

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Like Whittaker Chambers, I fear I am on the losing side, but I will not give up hope.

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You're on the right side. That's what counts.

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