I am still in the Facebook Gulag, and I will remain there until my 30-day ban is done. In the meantime, I have been posting here that which I would have otherwise posted on Facebook. When my banishment is over, I will invite all of my Facebook friends here. I do not plan to retain an active presence on Mr. Zuckerberg’s platform once I have done that.
Some of my friends have asked what I did to make myself persona non grata at Facebook. Let me explain that, as a crotchety octogenarian, I tend to speak my mind. Those who knew me when I was younger will likely say that I was no different at age 30. They’re right, of course, but I prefer attributing my misbehavior to my age.
So, I read a news item posted by someone in one of the private (political) Facebook groups that I was following. That news item discussed Sen. Sinema’s opposition to Medicare negotiating drug prices with the drug manufacturers. And, it observed that the good senator had received $750K from corporate and individual donors from the world of Pharma.
I commented on that post that, like so many other politicians, Sen. Sinema was a whore, but that at least we knew her price. Obviously, I was implying that selling one’s vote for money is little different than prostitution – selling political rather than sexual favors being the salient difference. That’s all it took. Perhaps if I had called politicians “wh0res” instead of “whores” I might have avoided punishment. Who can say?
I have said to my friends who have asked about this that Mr. Zuckerberg has every right to demand whatever level of speech and decorum he wishes on what is, to all intents and purposes, his personal platform. Zuck owns more voting stock than all other stockholders combined. I myself own a few shares, and I always vote with stockholder initiatives to establish corporate transparency and accountability. None of those initiatives has ever passed. I wonder why.
So, Zuck can forbid the use of words like fuck, whore, and so on. I am no stranger to obscenities in multiple languages. And, he has every right to coddle white supremacists, corrupt politicians, instigators of coups, insurrectionists, purveyors of wackadoodle conspiracy theories, medical misinformation that is provably contrary to public health and some of which is likely the proximate cause of preventable deaths. Facebook is his platform, as I said.
So, that’s the whole, boring story. I hope that some of you will stick with me on this blog. All you need to do to follow me is bookmark the index page (https://llcspace.site), and visit now and then. I will post something almost every day – just as have been doing on Facebook for years. I welcome your comments and thoughts on anything that I post. I have no plan to curtail anyone’s speech or edit their thoughts. At this point in my life, I simply don’t have the energy for it. Cheers!