By Jo Nova
Suddenly free speech is cool again
This is not the Tipping Point they were expecting.
Now that the election is safely over, Mark Zuckerberg, the coward, admits that censorship went too far and free speech is important. He’s decided that Facebook and Instagram will drop the third party “fact checkers” that crushed content and banned people because the “fact checkers” made too many mistakes. (Of course, he doesn’t admit that these were not mistakes at all, but entirely the plan.)
As David Evans (the other half) says “Reminds me of 1989, when the Berlin Wall fell. It was the end of another leftist regime based on censorship and cancelling. The good news just kept on coming.”
It’s a very limited mea culpa — it was just good intentions and a bit of scope creep you know…
It’s not like he was interfering in elections, tilting the balance to buy political protection, increase his profits, or score points at dinner parties with billionaire friends.
From the Press Release:
More Speech and Fewer Mistakes
In recent years we’ve developed increasingly complex systems to manage content across our platforms, partly in response to societal and political pressure to moderate content. This approach has gone too far. As well-intentioned as many of these efforts have been, they have expanded over time to the point where we are making too many mistakes, frustrating our users and too often getting in the way of the free expression we set out to enable.
And it was only “harmless content” that was lost and a bit of frustration was caused — it’s not like people died, wallowed in jail, or got attacked by illegal immigrants due to their loss of free speech:
Too much harmless content gets censored, too many people find themselves wrongly locked up in “Facebook jail,” and we are often too slow to respond when they do.
The Fact Checkers turned out to have their own biases:
If his plan was to give more expert opinions so “the people could judge” it does seem odd that they hired 20 year old nobodies with no qualifications to censor Harvard Professors in medicine.
The intention of the program was to have these independent experts give people more information about the things they see online, particularly viral hoaxes, so they were able to judge for themselves what they saw and read.
We’re not buying this miracle, Zuck, of how the people were supposed to be able to judge what they couldn’t see and never read…
It was just terribly bad luck the fact checkers all happened to support the same side of politics that Zuckerberg donated $400 million dollars to in 2020:
That’s not the way things played out, especially in the United States. Experts, like everyone else, have their own biases and perspectives. This showed up in the choices some made about what to fact check and how. Over time we ended up with too much content being fact checked that people would understand to be legitimate political speech and debate. Our system then attached real consequences in the form of intrusive labels and reduced distribution. A program intended to inform too often became a tool to censor.
He openly admits that the Twitter community notes policy is much better and will adopt it
It’s unusual in the business world to see someone copy a competitor (and openly say so):
We plan to phase in Community Notes in the US first over the next couple of months, and will continue to improve it over the course of the year. As we make the transition, we will get rid of our fact-checking control, stop demoting fact checked content and, instead of overlaying full screen interstitial warnings you have to click through before you can even see the post, we will use a much less obtrusive label indicating that there is additional information for those who want to see it.
And unusual too, that his competitor is happy.Elon Musk says “This is cool”.
And also like Musk, Zuckerberg is sending the policy brains team to Texas — realizing ten years too late, that the Californian bubble is not the place to connect with most Americans:
… we will be moving the trust and safety teams that write our content policies and review content out of California to Texas and other US locations.
Suddenly people will be able to discuss immigration and gender identity
Just toss those sacred cows out the window…
We want to undo the mission creep that has made our rules too restrictive and too prone to over-enforcement. We’re getting rid of a number of restrictions on topics like immigration, gender identity and gender that are the subject of frequent political discourse and debate. It’s not right that things can be said on TV or the floor of Congress, but not on our platforms. These policy changes may take a few weeks to be fully implemented.
How telling that he picks these topics. Immigration, especially is the hot button issue in the US, UK and Europe. This change will come through in mere weeks, he says, leaving us wondering if Zuckerberg suddenly realized Facebook and Instagram were in danger of being 100% irrelevant in the real world. A cruel observer might say that his interest in free speech was purely profit driven (or an act of desperation).
When will he let people discuss their medical experiences?
At ZeroHedge, they point out that it’s just over a month since Zuckerberg met Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago, and only one day after one of Trump’s closest allies joined the board of Facebook — the UFC CEO Dana White. Perhaps Trump gave him one last chance (with conditions)?
It’s all a step in the right direction. But after censoring ICU Specialists who were trying to save lives and who turned out to be right, Zuckerberg is going to have to do a lot more than mouthing the weak words of “mistakes”. The nicest possible interpretation is that as a mere double-digit billionaire, (unlike Musk) Zuckerberg was squeezed by the Blob until he complied. The US government could have put him out of business in five minutes if he offended them. But where is that story? His country — the world — really needs to hear the real mea culpa.
UPDATE: Meta’s chief Global Affairs Officer, Joel Kaplan says “they’ll cooperate with the Australian government on the under-16 social media ban, but stresses, “the right way to do it is to trust parents to know what’s best for their children.” This kind of pressure from Big Tech and from the US Government may end the Australian governments attempt to force digital ID’s upon us.
Nothing can compensate for the damage to lives that could have been avoided, but there are plenty of people out whose losses can be cut quickly:
— Jason Olbourne – (The Daily Australian) (@JasonQCitizen1) January 7, 2025
As Zuckerberg avoids a prison cell announcing the end of fact checkers and vastly reducing censorship, I am still waiting for my ‘appeal’ against a heinous false charge with no evidence, no due process and no way to get in touch which disabled 17 years worth of work, the past ten…
Letting all those people out of Facebook jail would be a start.
Photo by Jeremy Bishop on Unsplash
Now for YouTube, the only social media I use. Dr John Campbell must kowtow to the masters or have his account wiped if he gets another strike.
It’s soo demeaning.
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Should be interesting. My wife noticed a conservative podcast by Glen Beck had suddenly appeared on her Facebook feed.
Will be interesting when I tell a friend to search for an article and they are using meta platforms. They were unable to find the literature even though the link was generally something I had been directed to by a contributor on Jo’s website.
Hopefully it is not a false flag drawing out comments that may be subject to a country’s mis-information dis-information laws at a later date.
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The Berlin Wall. 1989.
It is a fact of human nature that first hand information takes precedence over second hand information.
I always believed that the tyranny that we saw in the USSR depended on first hand memory of the situation that existed before the revolution.
Once the old guard who had that first hand memory had faded from influence there would be dramatic change.
And so in due course the Wall came down, pretty much on cue.
Then, I thought, our greatest fear would be of civil war in the old USSR. But I would have thought that if that could be avoided for thirty years the future should have been bright. Much brighter that we are seeing right now,
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Zuck is terrified that TRUMP will remove his protection under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act.
The premise of that is that social(ist) media is a common carrier like a telephone or postal service and is not responsible for the content they carry since they claim not to be a publisher.
However, they clearly are publishers based upon the fact that they censor content and guide search results, ban people and viewpoints not compatible with Leftist ideology and shadow ban ppeople. Plus Farcebook and pre-Musk Twitter engaged in massive election interference.
He wants to avoid the possibility of future prosecution if his S230 protections are taken away.
I know enough up Leftists to never trust them, believe them, forgive them or forget about their misdeeds. And they should always be prosecuted for any wrongdoing they commit.
Zuck isn’t doing this because he all of a sudden believes in free speech, truth and basic decency or the traditional American Way. This is a survival tactic. If the Left ever assume power in America again, he will be back to his old ways. Thankfully, in these new days of reason, I think the beginning of the end of the Left is here.
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Correction. Second last paragraph, fourth word, “up” should read “about”.
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Or just make “up” uppity or up-themselves. 😆
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Does everyone remember the $500 million Zuckerberg donated to local “election reform” in 2020?
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Well said. Zuckerberg is also moving to Texas. That means he fears lawfare from the deep state, as Musk has found. It can take many forms.
He would also have noted that Musk fired half the staff of Twitter/X. That’s amazing. Clearly he was massively overstaffed. Censorship costs billions and it can be poor management, a massive waste.
Also he was openly very impressed by Trump’s response when he was shot and escaped death by millimeters and the security people just could not keep him down. That was genuine and Zuckerberg said so. A ‘badass’.
A lot of people have reassessed Trump after that moment. It’s one thing to want a job. Quite another to risk your life just for your principles. Few politicians would have stood up. Most would have kept low, been bundled into a waiting car and raced from the scene, shielded by others. Even so most of the media buried the photo since. It’s too powerful an image of courage under fire. That was not acting.
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And I think a lot of black people recognized it too. Attacked by the courts. Treated badly, mug shots, seriously threatened with losing everything including freedom. Facing death and jail just to do a job against violent establishment opposition who have prejudged you. Suddenly convicted felon ex President Trump was their sort of hero too. This made a huge difference in the black vote. And Zuckerberg was not the only one to wake up that they might be on the wrong side.
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Harris when she was AG prided herself on the number of black people she locked up, often on long sentences for trivial offences, or even if they were innocent.
https://www.blackagendareport.com/freedom-rider-kamala-harris-destroyed-black-lives
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The press hardly mentioned that. But then they hardly mentioned that she was unqualified for any job she held. All thanks to her married permanent boyfriend, the Mayor of San Francisco, Billy Brown. Who also sponsored Pelosi into Congress. She did not even know the first line of the US Pledge of Allegiance last week. You would think she would pick that up somewhere.
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“Zuck is terrified that TRUMP will remove his protection under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act.”
No. Not that.
But he is terrified.
He is terrified of his role in the plandemic, and how many “girls in the red dress” he “sent to to ovens”. 30 million so far, and the numbers keep climbing …
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I’d still trust Zuck and other lefties about as far as I could throw them.
We’ll know more after the mid terms and I just hope Trump and Vance and Republicans can have some wins and people continue to trust them. Who knows, but time will tell.
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Think VERY carefully about accepting any senior leading Leftists as being “reformed” or “admitting past mistakes”. Or believing anything they say.
Always assume they are lying and you will have no grief.
There are very few cases of genuine reform of senior Leftists.
Those Leftists in senior leadership know EXACTLY what they are doing. There isn’t an innocent one among them. Younger ones are often just useful idiots and may or may not be reformable.
Dr Thomas Sowell successfully reforned, but he was very young when he realised his mistakes.
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As for Leftists. Can a leopard change its spots (no offence meant to leopards BTW).
ww.phrases.org.uk/meanings/a-leopard-cannot-change-its-spots.html
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JR
or, I’d guess, would want to
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Think about the tremendous damage the Left have done to Western Civilisation.
They can’t just be allowed to walk away from that and expect forgiveness for the evil they have done (and continue to do).
They are just pretending to be reformed because their BS won’t survive under TRUMP.
They must not be forgiven.
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“Forgive and forget” just means they will do it again, because, “You didn’t hang them last time”.
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“And the walls come tumbling down.”
(I wish I remembered who sang that song.)
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Try this …
Delta Rhythm Boys – Joshua Fit the Battle of Jericho
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_V66kIEhUs
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The Call. But I think that’s a different song. Better riff, dumb lyrics.
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Some of the lyrics are not that dumb…
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https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=k5HfOipwvts
… You don’t have to take this crap
You don’t have to sit back and relax
You can actually try changing it
I know we’ve always been taught to rely
… Upon those in authority
But you never know until you try
How things just might be
If we came together so strongly
… Are you gonna try to make this work
Or spend your days down in the dirt
You see things can change
Yes and walls can come tumbling down
… Governments crack and systems fall
‘Cause unity is powerful
Lights go out, walls come tumbling down
Yes they do, yes they do, yes they do, yes they do, hey)
… The competition is a color TV
We’re on still pause with the video machine
That keep you slave to the H.P.
… Until the unity is threatened by
Those who have and who have not
Those who are with and those who are without
And dangle jobs like a donkey’s carrot
Until you don’t know where you are
… Are you gonna get to realize
The class war’s real and not mythologized
And like Jericho, you see walls can come tumbling down
… Governments crack and systems fall
‘Cause unity is powerful
Lights go out, walls come tumbling
(Down) You’ll be to week to fight it
(Down) oh unless we’re united
(Down) oh will you deny it?
Ooh
… Are you gonna be threatened by
The public enemies No. 10
Those who play the power game
They take the profits, you take the blame
When they tell you there’s no rise in pay
… Are you gonna try and make this work
Or spend your days down in the dirt
You see things can change
Walls can come tumbling down
… Governments crack and systems fall
‘Cause unity is powerful
Lights go out, walls come tumbling down
Governments crack and systems fall
‘Cause unity is powerful
[lyrics by Style Council – Jo]
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Here’s the song – John Mellencamp.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PErUiAyVoGc
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Def Leppard
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WKzW3Jl1zuw
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Style Council
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Dee C Lee – what an amazing singer
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Or countless people who try to signup for a FB account only to have it created and blocked for unspecified reasons the same day (fake AI based processing…) with no appeal process or corporate contact info provided anywhere, and accounts blocked or suspended again with zero explanation or accountability.
The rot is far deeper than just fact-checkers.
Let FB burn. It deserves nothing better.
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From the start of social media, I decided not to participate, preferring instead the blog of interest like Jo’s. Please pardon this comment which would be more at home in socials.
Our lovely Holden Statesman model VS, the rare supercharged V6 version, has been ours and looked after since new in 1998. Three days before Christmas it copped a hard smack in the rear from a driver in the car park who simply did not see it in the path of her new Nissan hybrid with failed crash prevention software. It will need some panel beating and painting and parts replacement like rear bumper, lamps, boot lid and garnish. Not easy to source, so here I am asking y’all for names and phone numbers of repairers you know all over Australia. My wife of 60 years is disabled and we need the big car to get her in and out more easily, but the insurance/repair sector is asleep until February. It is likely the insurers will want to write it off and give me minimal cash for my own repairs, so I need to estimate parts costs and availability immediately.
Using # for o, my email is sherr#01 at #utl##k d#t c#m. Tks.
Geoff S
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Be careful about even getting it assessed if that the case Geoff. The moment they assess it as a financial write off , it goes on the write off register and also effectively becomes their property.
We have just come out of a 6 month long battle , getting our Hilux back after interfacing with a kangaroo. We battled the insurance company for the easily repaitable “wreck” and then had to re roadworthy and re register it.
I have had good experiences with Tankards Panels in Ringwood VIC. They can do quotes via pics and seem comfortable with older cars (did restore work and a later bump repair on an 80s Jag for me)
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I am also looking for a smash repairer to fix door damage after a food delivery slave on an electric motorcycle interfaced with me. Hard to find a decent repairer that takes pride in their work.
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We have had great results with Sheen’s panels in City Road, South Melbourne over many years. Even on very old cars. The 850i V12 is 33 years old this year.
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Thanks Yarpos,
I will contact them tomorrow.
The insurer is the other car driver. My car was stationary.
The key is finding parts and a repaired who is a bit interested in a classic car.
It has new tyres, new windshield, new exhausts, wholly reconditioned engine last year, more.
A lovely car for long trips, far too good to scrap. Geoff S
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Fully agree. Two cars. V12 33 years old. V10 18 years old. Great cars are worth keeping. And I find the rear seat area on new cars, even a Tesla, makes a Morris Mini seem spacious.
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Remember also that if the offer from the insurance company is ridiculously low from your quote, threaten to sue the other driver. You always have this right. You do not have to deal with their insurance company at all.
I did this once, wrote my claim directly to the insured driver and the insurance company called and doubled the offer. They valued my son’s car at half the replacement value. That’s wrong. So they found a replacement car which was nearly identical, for twice what they offered. That was fair. We lost a sunroof but gained an automatic transmission. And the colour was the same.
Your claim in law is that the damage costs you the quoted repair amount or replacement value. The company will usually offer you half that.
It is not the business of their insurance company to value your car or write it off. And you are not obliged to deal with their insurance company.
In law it’s the cost to you of someone actions that matters and against which the holder of the policy is insured. And you want what you had or its exact equivalent. Insurance agents always play the odds. And someone else’s actions end up costing you thousands and peace of mind. You want what you had. In law you are entitled to it and no more. That’s what a judge will rule. The accident was not your fault in any way. They are obliged to make good the damage.
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Nigel Farage on things and the FarceBook Crook – Mark Z or somefink. And a fink he is –
https://youtu.be/rF-JOQPGLVw
Go straight to the 3 minute mark
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Sucker-burg definitely wouldn’t be saying that if Harris won, no way.
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Its just a reaction to losing market share . Facebook needs new customers and isn’t getting enough of them . He is looking at Elon having Trumps support and can see the writing on the wall . The competition is catching up……
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I was upset when Trump was cheated out of the 2020 election. I knew he really won and then we saw the disaster that was Joe Biden. But Trump’s loss in 20 was the best outcome that the world could have expected. My late wife was always of the opinion that things turn out for the best and in this case she was on the money. Trump would have just carried on with his 2016 agenda and the Democrats would have kept on with their disruption and his second term would have been wasted. As it is he is much, much wiser. He has surrounded himself with people who, over the past 4 years, have proven their loyalty to the principle of America First as well as their ability to deliver. Losing in 2020 was a Godsend for the US and I suspect us as well.
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Bit like when Warnie got done for a failed drug test. Regrouped, came back, if not better than ever, then certainly as good as he’d ever been (less the flipper).
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It was the drugs that got him in the end. The ciggies and whatever else. The heart/lungs/organs can only take so much.
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I think Warnie’s body went into shock after it was turned from a long period of poker nights in which he enjoyed ciggies, beers and pizza to a 14 day juice fast before his final trip to Thailand.
He was a man of extremes- an extremely talented sportsman (as opposed to athlete). He was extremely unprofessional when it came to diet and routine athlete behaviour but that was offset by his intense will to win and his discipline to perfect spin bowling.
On one hand you have a hedonistic individual who enjoyed life to the fullest, on the other you have an individual who can flick a switch and suddenly become a person who could go on a hardcore diet because of the fact they have played a sport at the highest level.
I’m not judging Warnie, just pointing out a few facts.
https://www.news.com.au/sport/cricket/shane-warne-finished-extreme-diet-before-suspected-heart-attack/news-story/a12167d2b7bc4ac255e1b8e467c5bdf2
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Me mums diet pills. LOL
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Tend to agree Lawrie. US citizens got to see and experience woke madness and incomptetence in full cry via Biden, Harris, Blinken, Mayorkas, Buttiegig , Granholm et al. The foll Democrat clown car was on display for 4 years.
Even now though we have acquaintances that think Biden was a good and competent POTUS or that he is “a good man” I dont what they really think (or if they think really) Mostly they just want to rage about Trump so the alternative has to be painted as wonderful. Most of their utterances are cut and paste from the first few lines of your usual ABC,SMH, BBC or Guardian hit piece.
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And the extra 15,000,000 Democrat votes from the 2020 election were not there in 2012, 2016, 2024. Something amazing happened in 2020 and the world knows it. But in the end, Trump has come out stronger and his policies better formed and the RINOs are gone, except McConnell.
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The Blob don’t want a bare knuckle fight out in the open. They want to just white ant everything till it falls down. Donald Trump has changed a lot already, but he can’t change The Blob. The best he can do is progressively disable it by removing its agents from positions of influence, and then build up society’s defences for when The Blob makes its next big push. Which it will.
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The whole Leftist woke world is collapsing all around them.
Where will they go?
What will they do?
I don’t care as long as they stay away from me and don’t expect to live off my taxes and discontinue their Civilisation-destroying activities.
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Here is a Joke. And it is a good news and a bad news story.
The bad news is that the wokes/democrats/flakes/wimps. etc, etc……..have all landed on the Moon.
The good news is that it is ALL of them.
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They will just retreat further into their fantasy world. Really its all they ever had , but for a while they convinced/conned others to buy into it.
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“Fact Checkers” are simply gatekeepers. They arrogate to themselves legitimate authority but are never qualified or quantified as to their bias or credentials.
I, for one, have no need of self appointed cretins who deign to decide what is factual or not.
Facts stand by themselves and do not need arbiters or propagandists to define what is factual.
Only lazy, weak minded individuals who lack critical thinking skills, have need of “fact checkers”.
Trusting the incompetent, unqualified, illiterate, innumerate, faceless, baseless, idiots to do my thinking for me is not going to happen. I’ll decide for myself. Thank you very much.
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Well said.
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I am reading a very good book about Copernicus by Dava Sobel. He was fact checked and hounded by the Catholic Church who thought (with no evidence) that the Earth was the centre of the Universe. LOL. He finally published his findings just before he passed away. He got it right in the 1500s. Our Sun is the centre of our patch and we revolve around that Sun. Top Man.
Learning about him when I was at school in the 1960s in England, we nick named him ‘Copper Knickers’. I apologise for my schoolboy error.
https://www.davasobel.com/books-by-dava-sobel/2016/9/2/a-more-perfect-heaven
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He was definitely up against the ‘fact checkers’ and the prevailing narrative according to the most powerful organisation of the time, the Church.
According to them, the ‘science was settled’, nothing new under the sun.
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/s
There was room to argue on the number of angels on a pin
/s
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This is a long article, but worth the time.
https://www.tabletmag.com/feature/rapid-onset-political-enlightenment
How Barack o. built a thought machine and how it was destroyed, by David Samuels.
A main character is David Axelrod. Others: Trump, Musk, and Netanyahu
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FarceBook is an absolute money pit, those massive data mining/scraping server farms are bleeding edge technology with bleeding nose power bills to match.
If the absolute leftist cancel carnage that happens on Bluesky were to happen to FB, SuckerBerg would find collapse of his finances occurring at warp speed.
Better to dial back the censorship to where profits remain acceptable (but not TOO far back)
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FWIW
Chiefio on that –
“The Zucker is a wind vane and goes with the present blowing political winds…”
https://chiefio.wordpress.com/2024/12/19/w-o-o-d-19-december-2024-christmas-comes/#comment-174767
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And another similar opinion –
https://michaelsmithnews.typepad.com/.a/6a0177444b0c2e970d02e860df2650200b-800wi
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No changes yet. Posted a certain cartoon earlier today that was censored instantly.
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“Suddenly free speech is cool again.”
Thank the Donald.
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In recent pictures Zuck seems to have had his hair curled to make him look human and not like an android.
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Farcebook is probably still receiving money from the US Government for censorship services, just as Twitter was before Musk.
That will stop under TRUMP. Zuck knows it.
In fact, TRUMP should make them repay all US Government (i.e. taxpayer) money they received.
Trump can pull them into line by threatening to remove S230 protections.
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When Trump was elected back in 2016 the social media companies worked with the Democrats to declare war on Trump, resulting in heavy censorship and him being booted off Twitter and Facebook. And, not to forget the endless impeachment attempts and weaponising the justice system against him after he lost in 2020. This time around it’s a different story. I’m guessing that Musk’s purchase of Twitter and Trump having his own social media company are major reasons as they can’t silence his voice. There is also a much stronger MAGA support base this time around and he holds both the house and the senate. Whatever the reasons, the left now fears Trump Mk2. A man that’s resurrected himself against all odds, survived direct assassination attempts, the justice system attacks and the MSM hit squads, and are now putting up the white flag before he’s sworn in, which is in complete contrast to 2016. If you look at the big MSM players, they are now all in ratings freefall. CNN is so unpopular they would need to pay people to watch their drivel and the same applies to MSNBC and ABC. Trump now owns the stage, holds all the power, holds the popular vote support and he can do pretty much anything he wants for at least the next two years until the mid terms. This is a once off opportunity for Trump to drain the swamp and fix the mess and to use King Charles expression, it’s a “last chance saloon” moment for Trump and for the rest of us in the west to avert total disintegration. Trump can’t be the bully this time around. Instead, he needs to be the statesman and use the moment to garner support from other western countries that are already shifting right and to create a global MAGA movement that changes the narrative and where everyone wants to sign up.
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FWIW – USA, H1-B visas and other things
“As With So Many Problems…..”
https://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=252636
What have we copied?
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I hope all this will happen in the UK someday not too far ahead. May I point out that the acronym for “Make England Great Again” is MEGA?
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FWIW – “head’s for thinking, feet’s for tap dancing”
“Poor “Joe Biden” can’t help himself as the sun sets on his ignominious career. He ordered the American flag to fly at half-staff into January 20, inauguration day, to signal grief and distress at Donald Trump’s swearing-in — not realizing, apparently, that Mr. Trump’s first act in office will be to order the flag raised back up, signaling symbolically the end to America’s grief and distress under “Joe Biden.” ”
Latest Kunstler
https://www.kunstler.com/p/prank-o-rama
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Don’t let them fool you: the move to Texas by FB, X, and Tesla will put them right next to the natural gas that tech needs for energy. Expect more pop-up data centers and modular generators to appear right next door to natural gas wells. And expect more sillycon vallee HQs to depart their sewage-covered, energy poor californication for someplace slightly more welcoming to something slightly more resembling free enterprise.
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