Screenshot from my email.
If you like my work, buy me a virtual cup of coffee at Ko-Fi
Yesterday, I put up a tweet on twitter questioning the security of the app Zoom and a link to a source I found on LinkedIn showing how “zoombombing” was used for anti-Semitic purposes. Today, I found I was suspended from twitter because of that tweet, but twitter won’t tell me why.
A couple of days ago, I posted a commentary about COVID and vaccines and I took great pains to shield the source of my conversation.
But when I woke up this morning and checked in on twitter, I found that the “haters” had discovered my commentary and decided to call me a bunch of names. No, it had nothing to do with “science” or “evidence.” It had everything to do with them being bullies.
Cover image for issue 160 of Clarkesworld Magazine – Zarrio by Edwardo Garcia
UPDATE – January 18-2020: Fortunately someone archived the original story, so it is preserved, even though Clarkesworld it offline.
UPDATE – January 16, 2020: This story has been pulled from publication by the magazine, and the rationale can be found here!
On twitter, I happened across a tweet by Cora Buhlert. It was referencing a story written by Isabel Fall for Clarkesworld Magazine called I Sexually Identify as an Attack Helicopter. Actually, I saw that Buhlert was referencing a twitter conversation of someone called The 1000 Year Plan (actually a Marxist blogger named “Gary” who announces personal pronouns as “he/him”) commenting on Fall’s story.
As you can guess, he didn’t like it.
What got my attention first is that Gary tweeted:
All of the comments are absurdly over-the-top praise that appeared almost immediately after the story was published. There are way more of these than is normal for a Clarkesworld story.
I looked at the story and couldn’t see any comments anywhere. Slightly earlier, Gary tweeted:
Meme found on Facebook
I was checking on Facebook this evening and, alas, was inspired to end the work week with a bit of snark. This really is the nature of social media, and especially (but not exclusively) twitter. It’s also the nature of blogging and fandom.
Over the past year and a month or two, my investigation into “science fiction fandom” (as opposed to science fiction) seems to indicate something pretty similar to what you see above. The same as when you comment on twitter, and for that matter, blog in general, Facebook, Instagram, whatever.
Last March, I lamented how climate change advocates seem to present their arguments, at least on social media, using feels, not facts. Okay, it’s not that black and white of course, but if you listen to extremist advocates such as Freshman House Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, she says we’ve got exactly twelve years to cut the United States’ (never mind the rest of the world) carbon emissions in half before unending doom and gloom.
Screen capture from twitter
She even produced a seven minute cartoon to “prove” it.
Cover art for the novel “Blood Heir” by Amélie Wen Zhao
I’ve held off about commenting on Amélie Wen Zhao controversial book Blood Heir, since it seemed that more than enough online pundits were weighing in, both for and against the book. Also, I didn’t really understand what the problem was all about. Yes, it had something to do with slavery, but what did Zhao actually write that at least some people found so offensive?
However, as a matter of good conscience, I felt I should look into the matter and see what it was supposed to be all about. To that end, I decided to seek the answer from one of the most liberal information outlets I could find, Slate.com. It doesn’t get much more leftist than Slate. Writer Aja Hoggatt wrote an article called An Author Canceled Her Own YA Novel Over Accusations of Racism. But Is It Really Anti-Black? published January 31, 2019. I found the write-up really even-handed, especially given Slate’s obvious leftist perspective.
First off, here’s the summary of the book I found at Amazon:
Screen capture from twitter
Yesterday, I wrote and posted a book review of SF/F author N.K. Jemisin’s Hugo award-winning novel The Fifth Season, both here on my blog and on Amazon (considering Goodreads as well).
Screenshot from twitter
I then posted links of my review on twitter and in a private writer’s group on Facebook. As you can see by the accompanying screenshot, I included Ms. Jemisin’s twitter “handle” in the body of my message in case she might want to read the review (and what author doesn’t want to read reviews of their books?).
As an aside, before someone mentions it, I suppose I could be accused of “trolling” Jemisin…except I wasn’t. All I did was put @nkjemisin into the body of my tweet which also contained a link to my review of her novel. If I had put her handle as the very first word in the tweet, it would have gone straight to her and it would not have appeared in my twitter feed. I didn’t do that. I wasn’t exclusively “aiming” my tweet at her, though I certainly wouldn’t have minded if she saw it and read the review. I suppose she could have taken it the wrong way.
Now to continue:
I popped over to her twitter account just for the heck of it and gave it a brief read. I don’t recall the specific content. I was just curious.
This morning, I decided to post another tweet referencing my review. I do this several times in twitter since folks might miss it the first time or two. I decided to include Jemisin’s twitter name once more, and out of curiosity, visited her twitter account again. Lo and behold, I was blocked. What the heck? What happened in the last 22 hours or so?
Image courtesy of Bill Kerr via Flickr
I always get some blow back when I post anything political on this blog, and I’ve been actively trying to avoid it for the past several days (which is why I have twitter and Facebook). However, I was very impressed by an article published by “The Federalist” (yes, they’re conservative) I read today titled The Stigma Against My Conservative Politics Is Worse Than The Stigma Of Being Gay written by Chad Felix Greene. In my opinion, Greene successfully compared his being bullied when he came out as gay at age 16, and how he is sometimes harassed online now that he’s adult and his political views have become increasingly conservative.
You can click the link I provided above to read the whole article, but I want to focus on one thing he brought up. Greene quoted from a story published on “Vox” (which is heavily biased left and not considered all that accurate) called Milo Yiannopoulos’s collapse shows that no-platforming can work. Now before anyone gets upset, I have no use whatsoever for Yiannopoulous. When I first heard about him and the various panic attacks being experienced on college campuses where he had spoken or wanted to speak, I looked up some of his content, and the guy is way over the top.
However, as “Vox” reports, removing all of Yiannopoulous’s online support essentially sank his career, and therein lies the tale.
There’s quite a bit of buzz in certain conservative circles about content bias against conservatives on social network and crowdfunding platforms. Yes, they all have “Right of Use” policies, and if you legitimately violate said-policies, your account can either be temporarily suspended or permanently banned. However, are those policies always applied impartially?
At “Business Insider,” I found an article called A top Patreon creator deleted his account, accusing the crowdfunding membership platform of ‘political bias’ after it purged conservative accounts it said were associated with hate groups. Highly successful liberal, atheist author and podcaster Sam Harris deleted his very lucrative Patreon account (nearly 9000 paying patrons) because he said the platform unfairly discriminated against conservative creators. That earns him “hero of the month” in my book. Too few people are willing (including me sometimes) to look past their politics to see that if it’s unfair, it’s unfair no matter if you do it to a conservative or a liberal.
However, the problem is much worse than what we might see on the surface. I found the BI article on Facebook, and a responding comment said:
Screen capture of Campus Reform article title
This is a (sort of) continuation of yesterday’s blog post Which “Echo Chamber” Should I Choose?, since I’ve had a rather “interesting” encounter on twitter this afternoon.
Actually, it began this morning when I read a Campus Reform article called Duke Univ produces ‘himpathy,’ ‘himpunity’ podcast. Having no idea what “himpathy” and “himpunity” were, I clicked the link I found at twitter and began to read.
Marissa Gentry’s article began with:
Duke University’s Peabody-nominated “Scene on Radio” podcast, titled “MEN,” is currently in the middle of its third season, and it revolves around the issues of misogyny and patriarchy.
Okay. Fine and dandy as far as it goes.
Scene on Radio is produced by John Biewen and co-hosted with Celeste Headlee. They each come with an impressive set of credentials, but given the content of Ms. Gentry’s article, it wasn’t exactly a secret what perspective they probably held regarding the topic of their podcast.
The Campus Reform article quotes the show’s content:
Laura Loomer
Disclaimer/Trigger Warning/Whatever: This is a rant. Feel free not to read it.
I’ve got time on my hands so, I decided to “get political” again. I just read a Daily Wire story (yes, they’re conservative) called WATCH: Laura Loomer Banned From Twitter For Criticizing Rep. Ilhan Omar, Islam. Here’s Her Response.
Up until a few minutes ago, I had no idea who Laura Loomer was, and I’m a little surprised that both twitter and Facebook banned her for life for criticizing Ilhan Omar. After all, political figures are criticized on social media all the time without such a drastic result. I myself have criticized Ms. Omar for her anti-Israel and antisemitic positions, and yet I am allowed to remain on social media.
Apparently even political scientist and columnist Ian Bremmer, though not a supporter of Loomer, commented on twitter that banning her seemed a little harsh. Of course there were many others, including The Jewish Voice who were more critical of twitter’s and Facebook’s actions.
poweredbyrobots.com 