The social atmosphere in the US is increasing bitter and divided. Tempers are fraying, and many are wondering what to do.
Social media - which I am increasingly going to be calling anti-social media for a host of reasons - is a major cause of those divisions.
Rightfully, social media has concluded that its own platforms are contributing. Wrongfully, they’ve decided the issue rests with bad or wrong ideas that they are now in the process of scrubbing from their platforms.
One thing has led to another and now they are forcefully deciding what’s good medicine which, predictably, is always in alignment with pharmaceutical companies and their profit motives.
They are deciding which investigative articles can be shown and which are ‘wrong.’ This week Twitter even went so far as to prevent a government website from displaying describing it as ‘potentially unsafe’ by which they mean ‘went against our fervent desire to see Joe Biden elected.’
Having good, curated information is a treat. But assuming that you know which is good and which is maliciously bad? All the way to the point that you’re shadow banning people like myself who are sharing honest-to-goodness scientific research papers? Well, now you’re out of control.
Accordingly, to balance the universe, I went out of control in this video and even took to a swear-filled rant…all tastefully bleeped out of course (because self-censorship is the best censorship!)
But don’t worry there’s a funny cat video to balance that all out.
I couldn’t agree more. Censorship by the Big Tech companies is indeed out of control. And like Chris said, you have to get resilient.
That includes DIGITAL resiliency:
“So You’ve Decided To Boycott Google…”: https://www.corbettreport.com/so-youve-decided-to-boycott-google/
(Good information on alternatives for google. Also some useful information in the comment-section)
And more recent:
“How to Save the Library”: https://www.corbettreport.com/how-to-save-the-library-questions-for-corbett-069/
(How to save the modern day burning of the ‘Library of Alexanderia’, or in other words how to save the internet from censorship)
This morning my brother sent me this email he received from the CEO of Gab, an alternative social media platform:
OCTOBER 15, 2020 BY ANDREW TORBA
The Digital Civil War is Here, Which Side Are You On?
Today was the biggest day in Gab’s history. For over four years we have been warning about Big Tech’s unchecked control and abuse of power over the flow of information, news, and communication online.
We have been building a digital Noah’s Ark for this very moment. A place where free speech is preserved and the free flow of information is protected for all people. Gab’s traffic, new user growth, and site activity all reached record levels this week.
Today started with Youtube banning dozens of top Conservative channels.
Then Twitter continued banning people who posted the Hunter Biden story.
Then the Senate Judiciary Committee Announced That They Will Subpoena Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey over NY Post Censorship.
Then Wikipedia Editors Censored the Hunter Biden Bombshell, and called the New York Post an ‘Unreliable’ Source.
Then Twitter Locked the Trump Campaign Account Less Than 3 Weeks Before Presidential Election.
Then Jim Jordan Posted the Hunter Biden-Burisma Story on a federal government website after Twitter Censors House Judiciary GOP, at which point the link was promptly censored by Twitter.
Then Twitter itself shut down completely.
All the while, Gab’s growth exploded.
Gab is the only place left on the internet that does not censor on behalf of the Google and Apple app stores to keep our app on their platforms. We do not answer to Apple. We do not answer to Google. We do not answer to Twitter. We do not answer to activist groups, big corporate sponsors, or the mainstream media.
We answer to you, The People.
On Gab you are not the product being sold. You are a valued member of our community and if you receive value from Gab and want to support our mission we hope that you’ll consider becoming one of our customers. Our highest honor is earning your business and support by providing a great service where information flows freely and people aren’t afraid to speak their minds.
Please keep our team and our community in your prayers. Make no mistake about it, the digital civil war has only just begun. It’s the oligarchs of Silicon Valley, the little tyrants who bend over backwards for their Communist Chinese Party masters, against We The People.
This is a spiritual war.
There is a very clear dichotomy between good and pure evil.
The line in the sand has been drawn.
What we need to remember is that we have God and Truth on our side.
United in faith, we can and will accomplish anything together.
The question is: which side are you on?
Andrew Torba
CEO, Gab.com
October 15th, 2020
Jesus is King
(source)
Apparently, Gab has not only been deplatformed by other social media, but blocked by Paypal and Visa, too.
Snarky Aside: That means they've turned to echecks, snail mail checks, and Bitcoin as funding mechanisms by which people who chose to subscribe to their Pro side can pay. This is a use case for Bitcoin that is pretty well known in many repressive regime countries. We just might discover its usefulness more broadly here in the good old Land of the Free.
LMAO at Chris’ rant! Yes, we all need to laugh.
As for the censorship, man does it suck. It is very scary because it’s such a formidable power. I just hate it. I can’t imagine who are these people? Who do they think they are?
As for our modern day media ills, I got a keen bird’s eye view of the media with Matt Taibbi giving a lecture to a class of aspiring journalists. He just wrote a book called Hate, Inc., which was the platform for the lecture, and in this lecture he dives into the history of media, and details how media has devolved over time. Many factors are at play, but commercial interests play a major role. In this lecture, Taibbi does not mention one event that profoundly impacted the media and that was the deregulation of the FCC under the Clinton Administration. However, I learned that the Reagan Administration began the deregulation of news media. A series of events have gotten us to our present day news media clusterfuck. The censorship makes everything ten times worse.
Matt Taibbi would be a great guest to have right now on PP.
Ya’ll can watch his lecture here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mG1qJeDI9Ok
I agree with Mr. Torba, only a spiritual solution will save us. There are no economic, monetary, or political solutions. DC is a mirror of the nation as a whole and this nation is not well. That may well be the reason for this God awful planetary line up. When people suffer, many turn to prayer, self reflection, charitable works, philosophy, etc. Suffering forces people to re-prioritize.
Unfortunately suffering can also spawn the devil in people.
Maybe we need a new form of resilience, “Information Resilience”. Basically how reliable are you information sources? Are they real people you know and trust? How deep and wide are those networks? Are they first hand sources of information? What are their biases and agendas?
Simply without good information we are likely to make poor and even harmful desiscions.
-Travis
Hello Travis! Happy to share some of my sources of information, a lot of these guys are market guys, I don’t agree with all of these people on every point but I’m interested to hear what they have to say: Michael Pentos, John Robino, EB White, Catherine Austin Fitts, Gail Twerberg/ourfiniteworld.com, Lynnette Zang, Rick Rule, Charles Nenner, Evon Von Greyerz, RFK, Jr/Children’s Defense Fund, Alliance for Natural Health, ZeroHedge, the Misis Institute, Global Research, Matt Taibbi, Jimmy Dore, Whitney Webb, Seymore Hirsch, Glen Greenwald, The Hill Rising, Greg Mannarino, Craig Hemke, Charles Hugh Smith, Chris Hedges, Chris Martenson(!), Veritas Project, the Greyzone, Craig Murray, Gerald Celente, Valuetainment, George Gammon, USAwatchdog.com (for the guest line up), government websites…
I also watch nature shows which have a tendency to illustrate the nature of things: one living entity is food for another - all the way up the food chain where the greatest wealth transfer of all time is taking place.
What if this system of information flow is unworkable?
We have a number of factors.
The speed of information. If I release a unit of information, what is the rate of persons per unit of time that learn the information? (This factor is probably higher then ever in all history)
How fast and well can people process the information in their own heads? How trustworthy is it? Is it good/bad info? Is it biased? Questions? (This is probably mostly the same throughout human history. Probably depends on education and curiosity levels)
Quality of the information. We live in a world where the next news stoy makes the next dollar. The time it takes to fully reseach the topic is often just too expensive. ( we probably have a lot more low quality information)
The speed to quality ratio. Low quality information can simply travel much fast in the current system.
Number of information sources ( Simply population keeps going up, soures go up )
Biased news ( people always have done that )
Knowledge foundations and biases. Biases are simply cognitive short cuts. It's either have biases or get a bigger brain. So I guess we are stuck with biases. Knowledge foundation, just watch the Crash Course and you will have a new knowledge foundation. Don't watch the crash course you have a different foundation. ( so many people these days are separated from a world were real thing matter any more. Their knowledge foundations reflect that )
The ONLY way to counter bad information is with good information. (Wait, didn't we just say that bad information is a lot easier and faster then good information)
In past eras information had to spread by word of mouth, or the town paper only released once a week, or maybe per day. But people had time to digest the information. A common knowledge state, or informational equilibrium could be reached.
Now we are constantly flooded with new information before the old information can be processed. It's like a super massive and highly connected neural network with flows of information that constantly explode and flood over each other. The are simply too many neurons and too many connections. Low quality information has the complete advantage. The system broken by design.
Solutions (maybe)
We need about 4-5 billion people to self remove from the population.
Go back to a world where information was much slower. What if we banned 24/7 new networks? You would only release news between 6-8am and 6-8pm. (Ya, that would fly like a lead balloon)
Chris and Adam - We need you both to produce enough good information to overcome the bad information. I'm thinking about a 100 new articles per day with both morning and evening audio/video news updates, including weekends and holidays.
So I guess we need Chris and Adam to get cracking, or else we are all doomed!! LOL
-Travis
Granted, the spot in the road where we currently are is bad, bad, bad (and getting worse). But if all you do is look at where we’re at today, you won’t take a sober glance down the road a few months or years. Look ahead. Do you not see how all the worst possible outcomes are now within easy reach from where we are now: civil war, WWIII, complete totalitarian takeover of society, total economic collapse leading to a totalitarian economic reset that benefits only the oligarchs and their servants but kills or enslaves everyone else? If you can’t see these imminent possibilities on your own, there is plenty of open source information out there in which these developments are being discussed approvingly and plans made that will lead to these outcomes.
In my mind, resilience must definitely include plans and preparations for the now possible worst outcomes. Are you ready for:
A breakdown in law and order for a time in which crimes and violence are mostly uncontrolled by police and the criminal justice system. You’ll be left on your own to cope with the worst impulses of the worst people and the desperate actions of “normal” people who commit unspeakable acts just to survive.
Organized political violence by government forces and anti-government militias of various stripes battling them for control and revenge.
A chaotic breakdown in the money system for navigating every day life, then more chaos as a variety of competing “solutions” are proposed, and finally a money system reset imposed by force that only benefits the banks and billionaires.
WWIII which will spare no country.
“Happy Hunger Games! And may the odds be ever in your favor.”
Taking small steps towards resilience is always positive. At the same time and if one is looking towards the sustainability of said achieved goal of resilience then one needs to have an understanding of what possible things lie in the future.
As a career strategic planner and programme/project designer, I can say that before planning anything, before setting goals and results, one need to first gain a VERY good understanding of the context preferably looking at things through an integral lense, and look at the trends, past and present and as is possible, extrapolate models into the future if those trends remain true. To me, none of us on PP know what is really going on and thus I created the new forum for looking at the question of Who is/are the Ultimate Decision Maker/s on Planet Earth. What is more important than that to understanding the present and extrapolating into the future?
It is sad to say, but Chris’ article is right on target.
I have travelled internationally more than most. I also have family and friends living in other nations and in the so-called third world. And I have - on occasion - been relatively close to positions of political and economic power. Over several decades of experience, I have discovered that the American media is little more than a very large disinformation platform.
Now, social media is following right along that same path.
In the past when I told other Americans things that I knew to be true - but which ran counter to established narratives - many have looked at me as if I was simply crazy. But increasingly Americans are discovering - based upon their own knowledge and experience - that some of the established narratives that they are being fed are pure fiction. Some of these people are generalizing - accurately - that most of the established narrative is pure fiction.
The people in power don’t seem to understand that this is an increasingly dangerous situation. As conditions visibly deteriorate, a nation simply cannot be held together by narratives which are no longer believed.
Hello thc0655! No matter what the outcome, most everyone will have unique experiences. Even in the dystopia you describe, some people will suffer miserably, some will come out unscathed, some will die, some will kill, there will be all manner of realities out there.
Don’t underestimate that for as much as this scenario will spawn really bad actors, it will also ignite people who rise above the mayhem and become protectors or saviors of sorts, and everything in between.
@Mary59
With respect, I’ve taken the opposite tack. Since no one can know what from among the myriad possibilities that our human imaginations can conjure will actually materialize, a resilient lifestyle is the best preparation. The emphasis needs to be on “lifestyle.” We need resilient lives, which requires a lot more production and a lot less consumption. It doesn’t work to purchase one’s lifestyle off of shelves; rather, we need to learn how to build our own lifestyles by our own hands.
Also it’s a good idea to try to locate one’s ark out of the main paths of egress from the metropolises.
I think in terms of “100 Year Solution” and “30 Year Solution.” The 100 Year Solution is the baseline. It does not depend on outside energy, markets, or exotic replacement parts. On top of that I’ve layered what I call 30 Year Solutions - those are technology upgrades on basic hand-powered processes that are labor saving and life quality enhancing for as long as they can be kept operating. So, for example, my 100 Year Solution for heat and cooking are wood stoves and hand tools for felling and processing trees. My 30 Year add-on includes oil heat, chainsaws, and a gas-powered log splitter. (I’m on the verge of adding solar, too.)
I shared my 12-point program outline for developing a resilient lifestyle once before. I’ll repeat it here. Each point is a metric, each metric has specific criteria to indicate levels of accomplishment. (Really, this is just my way of codifying the process of rediscovering the way our ancestors lived right up until WWII.)
Own property free and clear (if you don’t have a mortgage the banks can’t take your land)
Reduce legible income as much as possible (Socialists and populists take from those who appear to have “excess” to give to those who appear to “need more.” Choose on which side of the ledger you want your name to appear and take legal steps to make it so)
Get fit and healthy (both are essential to a self-made life)
Produce as much of your annual food as possible (if you’re not dependent on the supply chain you won’t go hungry)
Produce extra annual food to sell or trade to pay food expenses (since you can’t grow everything, be in a position to trade with others who can’t grow everything)
Start a food forest (it’s a ‘plan B’ perennial food source for those times when nature doesn’t cooperate or some official or unofficial brigand takes your annual crop)
Preserve food without refrigeration (electricity is not guaranteed)
Invest in infrastructure, not stocks (land and equipment are true wealth; stocks, bonds, and bank accounts can disappear in many ways)
Build community (strong local networks are true security)
Prepare for self-protection with and without guns (guns are equalizers, but might not always be available; be prepared)
Prepare for hunting with and without guns (learn to hunt; keep in mind guns might not always be available, or might not work when the larder’s empty; learn to trap)
Build a paper-based resource library (the internet might not always be on so essential resource materials and how-to books need to be in paper; cultivate books showing old ways; cultivate a reading library of literature, politics, philosophy, and economics because “controversial” books and ideas might not always be accessible)
Here’s an excellent resource library for old ways of doing most anything. The curator has simply digitized out-of-copyright textbooks and manuals. You can download and print them for yourself: http://www.survivorlibrary.com/
Chris, all of this just nailed down the fact that at least one of the tech giants are going to be broken up to send a huge message to the others. I think if they just send a memo with your rant against The Fed they would see how all of us are fed up on a lot of Bill of Rights issues that are being molested… You are a high character Man and I like in every direction you are come from.
Now, to the censors: you are all a bunch of idiotic, ignorant, ass holes that need to just go away. To the CEO’s of these soon to be broken up entities: you possibly just drove into your own casket the final nail to get broken up. You made a horrible mistake trying to covey your interpretation of the Bill of Rights when it was obvious your actions tried to elect Joe Biden. The same Biden who’s son pimped his way into the Ukraine and China and filled the pockets of his son~ Further, if anyone believer’s this wasn’t the intent of his father too to use as his front Man, his Boy, to just sell the privilege’s to meet with his Dad for a pocketful of cash. Biden, VP is a crook. Has always been as he is a politician, it’s in their DNA. Hunter and his daddy belong in prison, with the Clintons and what the hell, may as well drag Obama too. Of course none of this will happen because when I go to look up the information on all these Folks you decided to sensor relevant materials and that pisses me off. Where will it ever end? Yep, got to break your asses up. You arrogant son’s of a bitches. If I’m a Biden supporter I would judge you by your actions because they speak to a world where I can’t think for myself or research all the data to make up my own mind. You think you know me better than I do myself. So, get ready, as I think you are going to get some not so flattering push back from the Trump administration because this kind of censorship just helped reelect Trump his second term and is why you tried to sensor the papers right to submit an investigative report. Thank you and dumb move you stupid shits.
Don’t like to go there when it comes to the Political Reality show, but this illustrated how FUBAR centralization of systems that fail when centralized. https://www.zerohedge.com/political/least-important-election-our-lifetimes
Another article stated that everything the US Central gov does is anti-constitutional. Perhaps not far from the Truth, These rocket scientists are hell-bent on centralization of the Internet, while the design of the internet protocol is decentralized. Maybe that is why IP6 is so slow to catch on. There is an addressable address for every client by default.
POSTED WITHOUT COMMENT The free speech vs. censorship issue that erupted again this week in the US ------- has ------- ------------- for -------. Markets might not want to admit that fact, but it does. Aren’t market trading decisions supposed to proceed in an environment in which we have full ------------ about what is going on? ------------ not. Good luck making ----- ---------- about what to — and what to ---- when you don’t know ---- – ----- --. Meanwhile, here is what we are allowed to talk about. https://www.zerohedge.com/markets-0
Free speech is the most important political issue. No matter what the issue, we need the freedom to openly discuss things. That makes censorship (hard or soft) a significant danger.
The First Amendment is an obstacle to direct government censorship, but having a corporate proxy censor things is a way around it. I can’t prove the government is directing Big Tech to do these things, but it is possible. Maybe Big Tech companies are censoring by their own choice, but maybe they are being intimidated into doing so. Neither is good.
The first victim of censorship is objectivity. Objectivity means using reason to integrate facts to understand the real world. If we block off certain facts from consideration, we are necessarily prohibiting ourselves from looking at reality. We are looking at a selected subset of information, which means any conclusions reached on that basis are not taking into account all the facts.
HCQ is a perfect example. If doctors are not aware of the evidence that it helps with COVID, they aren’t able to give the best possible treatment; scientists can’t figure out the best solution; and patients aren’t aware of their options. Science should be free of political interference.
“Intellectual resilience” means one’s ideas and thinking (content and method) are made stronger through interaction with reality. Living in safe-space echo chambers makes one’s ideas weaker: there are no challenges to groupthink allowed; feelings are elevated above truth; etc. And thinking methods deteriorate: we are beholden not to truth and reality, but to consensus and tribal obedience. This can be overt (think ostracism and censorship) but also very subtle.
If you cherish your thinking ability and ideas, it is imperative to take each idea and test it against reality, over and over. Treating an idea like a fragile snowflake, refusing to consider counterarguments or new evidence, doesn’t make the idea stronger.
In fact, letting one idea be “protected” against criticism corrupts the rest of your thinking. Each idea gets integrated with the rest, so eventually a contradiction appears between this “protected” idea and another idea. So to resolve the conflict, one of the ideas has to change. If one persists in protecting the first one, that means throwing out some other idea.
This is the way in which censorship is not only politically dangerous, but epistemologically as well.
Another example is Lysenko in the Soviet Union, which undermined the progress of science. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysenkoism
This was politically and economically damaging, but it harmed the minds of scientists as well. Imagine at the point of a gun trying to integrate a false scientific theory with facts in your lab, or with other theories. It can’t be done. So consider the consequences to the minds of the scientists, caught in an impossible situation.
Edit to add:
I also find the condescension behind censorship infuriating. Big Tech or government or the press treat us like fragile little children, to whom the mere exposure of controversial ideas will destroy our fragile little minds. It is absurd and incredibly insulting.
As other liberty advocates have pointed out: if censorship is necessary for the average person, why are regulators, censors, or other officials exempt? Are there minds so different that they are immune from these alleged ill effects?
Of course not. It is all about power. They want us to think a certain way, and one way to do that is to control what information we are exposed to.
“Regulation” is not the answer. That just puts government in charge of the censorship. I’m not sure what the ultimate solution is. One good measure is removing section 230 protection in the US. Because they censor, the Big Tech social media companies are effectively publishers, not platforms for public debate. They should not have the benefit of legal protections on that front. Leave them open to lawsuits as a way to balance the power and influence they have over public discourse.
Another measure would be to consider changes to their patent protections. If they don’t allow open discussion of HCQ, for instance, someone else may set up a competing platform for open discussion. The Big Tech company may come after the new forum to shut them down, alleging IP infringement. But how can that be, if the new forum wouldn’t even exist were it not for censorship on the Big Tech sites? (I don’t know whether there are real cases involving this.)
First and foremost I must give a hat tip to Quercus Bicolor. He posted a video of Daniel Schmachtenberger a week ago in the "Fauci " thread ( that went balls to the wall political) The video was “Sensemaking V”
That video led me to and down a rabbit hole similar to the one I entered with Bitcoin 9 years ago. I have known since the early 60’s about how information is used to control the narrative, and thus control a population. Social Media has now become the primary battleground in the information war. The technology has far outstipped the ability of the average person to combat. To be woke means to recognize manipulation for what it is. If you do not recognize the manipulation you are utterly defenseless.
Daniel told a story about Trump I found extremely interesting. In the past Presidents would surround themselves with like minded people. They were all on the same page and had the same agenda and outlook. Trump has not done that. (Perhaps that is why there is a high turnover in his admin.) Daniel knows some people who were in the Trump admin. They told him in dealing with a particular issue Trump would have a meeting where there were people who disagreed strongly. He would let them argue their positions and sit silently just listening. This could go on for a couple of hours or more. When it was over he would make a political calculation on what his base would think and get on Twitter. Trump is not a stupid man. He is cunning and knows the power of controlling the narrative. Truth has become the greatest irrelevancy in history. Narrative is where the power lies.
How to get “woke”? Sensemaking is becoming increasingly more difficult. Maybe the first step is to question everything. Sofistek catches a lot of flak here for that but it is important.
The following vid is from Rebel Wisdom and is the first in a series on sense making. Once we know how to make sense then the narratives can change. The battle humanity is engaged in is a fundamental war for freedom.
This is a quote from the first comment under the vid.
“When you tear out a man’s tongue, you don’t prove him a liar, you’re only telling the world that you fear what he might say.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VkKnOEQlwl4
