Social Media

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Social Media are organizations with the state purporse of helping users connect and share media (information) with other users. Basically, they exist for allowing user-generated content (text, posts, photos, videos), to enable free speech. Because of the rabid far-left agendas of Silicon Valley tech companies, they are bifurcating their industry, nation (and world) into those that value free speech (even offensive stuff), and big tech which values only far left speech and is willing to censor uncomfortable truths for despotic regimes (including themselves or the DNC).

Examples

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BitChute - Bitchute is a UK based P2P (Torrent front-end) alternative to YouTube video sharing, created in 2017. A lot of conservative/right folks cross-post to BitChute, in case they are blocked by the crypto-fascists at Google. This insurance worked well for a few that were banned or demonetized for reasons unknown or imagined. Far left organizations like PayPal also joined the fray by banning them and the SPLC has criticized BitChute for some of its content. In a free speech zone, it's true that some content veers towards offensive/unsavory like Christchurch mosque shooting video or manifesto: but these facts/content is necessary to research and discuss topics from an informed point of view. Their complaint would be more valid if the same people complaining didn't propagate leftists hate themselves, or they at least stopped the pretense that they care about free speech.

Brighteon - I think this was once Real.Video as well, but now is Brighteon.com -- they were basically an alternative YouTube, but because people hosted historically factual but offensive things (like the Christchurch shooting video), they were threatened with de-platforming, so are working on alternatives.

Diaspora - Self-hosted Social Network founded in 2010 (funded via crowd funding / a Kickstarter campaign) in response to Facebook user spying. Diaspora is Greek for scattered (as in dispersed population).

Facebook -
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Facebook is 3 things: bad interface, bad management, and biased policies. I want a social network that gives me control of what I see and share -- both to my friends and to advertisers. I realize they need to make a buck, and my information is their product, but the point is you can still give users the illusions of control. But Zuckerberg seems to have falling into the egocentric pit that many young billionaires do, they think because they timed things well, and worked hard, and got lucky that they're smarter than everyone else. This makes them arrogant, less mature, and slower to grow than the average human: Dunning-Kruger, inflated by being surrounded by yes-men.

Full30 - Basically, Gun YouTube that's in beta. Their contact and information is on a footer that you can't click on because it keeps auto-loading more content and moving it away when you try to click it.

Gab - Gab is a free-speech alternative to Twitter (and to a lesser extent), launched in 2016. The problem is a social network is only as good as its participants (and moderation). There's no moderation, and many of the users are disenfranchized, so while some content is great, the general quality control and tone can be worse than Twitter (which is low). And because Apple doesn't support Free Speech there's no iOS App, though you can use their web interface at gab.com.

GoWild - Instagram for the firearm friendly outdoorsman, with a few bloggy features. Mobile-only.

Google -
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In 1995, two 20-something Ph.D. students from Stanford were looking for something to do their dissertations on, and decided that they should focus on a Web crawler and indexer research. Once they found funding and a revenue stream based on advertising, they became what's known in the Valley as a Unicorn: a multi-billion dollar company. And their saga from College Dormitory Culture to Corporate Cult began. Unfortunately, explosively rapid successes skip normal growth and maturing processes in corporations, and can create cults (or at least cult-like behavior). There's a line between corporate culture and conformity to the corporate line or expulsion, and that line seems to often get crossed at the Googleplex, without any of the normal checks and balances that might apply at a more moderate corporation.

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Instagram - Facebook bought Instagram, so what Instagram does, reflects on Facebook. And Instagram withholds likes from people, to get them to post more often, and is a known partisan outlet.

LBRY - LBRY is a secure content sharing and publishing platform (using blockchain) that is decentralized and owned by its users. That means it should get around most oppressive restrictions on content. It's also a micropayment system where you can buy/share content and charge for information/data. It's being used partly as an alternative YouTube.

Mastadon - Self-hosted Social Network (Twitter/Tumblr) started in 2016 to combat Facebook or Tumblr de-platforming/censorship.

MeWe - When Zuckerberg called privacy a “social norm of the past” (circa 2012), Mark Weinstein created MeWe: a privacy-centric alternative to Facebook. 4M users (circa 03/2019) is not exactly 2B of FB, but it is a signal that there are a fair amount of people looking for Social Media that doesn't require you buy into Zuckerberg's crypto-fascism. (Though honestly, it's not even that hidden any more).

Nextdoor - Nextdoor is a Social Platform, that felt that removing anonymity, keeping it local, and better policing/community standards would make a different type of Social Media platform. While the created might have been well intentioned leftist activists, they failed to understand that wokescolds will ruin everything you give them a voice in. So it has all the maturity and depth of a Twitter, wrapped in false civility and double standards of leftist PC thought-police, moderating anything.

Parler - Pronounced “par-lay” (not parlor) was set up in 2018 as another free speech alternative to Twitter.
  • In 2019 it was tiny with 100K users. But after getting some high profile celebrities kicked off Twitter for not being Marxist enough, and landing there, it started to build a real audience -- going from a few thousand downloads to hundreds of thousands a month (#1 in the App Stores and stayed there) and 500K active users in mid 2020. .
  • Social Networks are the sum of their audience, and they're mostly attracting those kicked off other platforms: so a bit heavy on the anti-PC stuff labelled as Hate Speech (Anti-Semitism, anti-feminist or anti-Trans/LGBTQ), but as FB and Twitter got more hostile to conservatives, Parler was getting a more diverse audience and getting much better.
  • After Digital Kristallnacht in 2021 where the fascist left tech companies de-platformed tens of thousands of conservatives; they were flocking to Parler and activity, accounts and downloads exploded. They had reached a critical mass.
  • Since fascists aren't happy with people having anywhere to disagree with them -- the Tech Oligarchs attacked in unison to destroy any outlet that conservatives might have to find a voice (kicking them off Google Play, Apple's App Store, Amazon's AWS service pulled their hosting, and any other service they used yanked them as well, using the made-up pretense that they were uniquely dangerous because virtually all of the threats and coordination around the Capitol Hill Violence (basically a protest that got out of hand) was done on Twitter and FB (not Parler).
  • Non-fascists are flocking to MeWe and Gab instead.

Pinterest - Pinterest is an image (and small video) sharing based social media company, launched in 2010 (it went public in 2019). Users can upload, save, sort, and manage images (known as pins), and organize them in collections (known as boards). It has a few hundred million monthly active users.

Telegram - This started in 2013 as a Facebook free version of WhatsApp, for those who trust some Russian guy making his own security protocols more than Zuckerberg. But it's evolved into more a micro-blogging service than just point-to-point communications (broadcast channels, group chats, bots, etc). With 200M users (2019) it has a following.

TikTok -
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TikTok is a Chinese-owned (ByteDance) version of VideoTwitter -- where you can upload short videos (3-60 looping videos). Since the App is highly popular, and created with Chinese Government sponsorship and regulatory rules, it has been called a "national security threat to the West", especially amongst armed services personnel because it can convey location, image and biometric data to its Chinese parent company, which is legally unable to refuse to share that data to the Chinese government.

Twitter -
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Twitter is an enemy of free speech and tolerance. Examples include them shadow banning conservatives (and admitting it, on-tape), some of their employees getting excited about violating their members privacy (assuming those members are conservatives/Trump), and how they suppressed anti-Hillary tweets during the election. That's scarily Orwellian. It's still their company and they get to be as dicky as they want to be with it (within the bounds of the law). But I'm going to point out their moral terpitude just so that consumers can make an informed choice -- not as any call to action (legal, governmental or otherwise).

YouTube -
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YouTube (a division of Google) has a specially abusive place when it comes to the world of selective censorship - that only seems to apply to truths liberals hate to hear.
  • PragerU's was suppressed/censored (silently), with no evidence offered that anything they have said it wrong, untrue, or racist. They do expose misleading beliefs of the far left, so that appears reasonable to block or punish them.
  • YouTube went on a crusade against guns, first you couldn't sell guns, then promote guns, and so on. They terminated gun parts channels, like Brownells. They're inventing laws and changing terms that are against the spirit of our constitution.
  • As part of an NYT Expose by Project Veritas (James O'keefe), they caught the NYT editor Nick Dudich explaining how he was using friendships and coordination with YouTube (Earnest Pettie) to manipulate social media to intentionally influence the news. YouTube was being a tool of evil, to work against a free election.

Every company has a right to decide who they support or not. But the problem is Google/YouTube PRETENDS to be an open platform (and community service). Yet, they're not doing what they advertise. If they openly admitted in their policies that they're a left-of-center advocacy site that will censor center/right positions at will, then at least that would be honest.



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