An Open Letter To Facebook...

 "Apparently, you can post "Death to America" with impunity. You can call for the elimination of the White Race. You can easily express your belief that all republicans and conservatives should die. You can even write how you would like to see a Senator or President of the United States assassinated, and Facebook will do nothing about it. You can lie about a pandemic. You can use Facebook apps to overthrow a government, as the Taliban just did, and Facebook will maintain a constant state of inertia. Make a statement about Afghans suffering what you believe they deserve, however, and suddenly, there's 'Community Standards'" -- The Overlord

The Overlord has been sentenced, again, to "Facebook Jail".

What was his crime?

To type the words "I hope every Afghan dies".

Someone's tiny, undescended testes got tangled, I reckon. Next thing I know, Facebook Jail.

Oh, of course, you can "appeal" this decision, as if you've been convicted of a crime. It's not much of a process, and on many an occasion the ban is lifted almost immediately once someone with a brain in their head evaluates what's been said and judges it on its merits.

Or, you can try the convoluted process of what Facebook calls it's 'Oversight Board' which is the electronic variant of a Soviet Show trial. It's a fucking joke and a pernicious anomaly in what is supposed to be a modern, Western society.

But I'm sick and tired of the whole process. It doesn't work. So, it's time to try a different tactic.

I am an American citizen, and I have a First Amendment right to write whatever I wish, whenever I wish, and 'Terms of Service' be damned. If others can freely use your platform to call for my death, I'm only returning the favor.

Let's start at the beginning.

I have seen, and been the recipient of, much worse invective tossed about by others. I have been harassed online by the Legion of Losers who live in their mother's basements, smoking weed all day, subsisting on Cheetos that fell between the sofa cushions. Most, I reckon, are involuntarily celibates who have nothing better to do all day than to nark people out on social media in fits of psychotic rage.

These are generally the sort of people who haven't the guts to join ANTIFA or BLM, or just go full-on SJW, because that might mean having to leave the house, and perhaps be rejected by in person by real, live human beings. Most are shallow thinkers, mere virtue signalers who can be counted upon to do what others do because they're stupid, easily pressured, easily led, emotionally immature, courting popularity, or believe a mob must always be right.

If the mob wasn't right there wouldn't be so many people in it, right?

These are the people who insist that everyone to the right of Stalin is a danger to society. That anyone who expresses an opinion that might cause them to think badly (or even worse) about themselves is a war criminal. These are the people who couldn't muster up enough mental energy or personal ambition to fart, on a good day. Those who live in a constant state of fear, anxiety, envy, about their low status in life.

Some are just flat-out insane.

The only satisfaction they ever get out of life is the vicarious thrill they get of watching someone else punish another that they've informed on.

This is the 'Community' that sets your 'Standard', Facebook. The lonely, the losers, the pantybunched, those who cannot separate their feelings from their politics.

I am NOT a member of your 'Community'; I am someone who uses your service, and in refusing to belong to your 'Community' of terribly anguished souls, I reject their 'Standards'. They are not rational human beings and emotionally unstable. So much so that an idea sends them into fits of apoplexy.

And the sort of abuse that I and others are subjected to on an average day on this very platform is apparently acceptable at Facebook. I reckon the only difference is that people like me aren't thin-skinned basket cases who bother to report the expression of an icky thought. We're made of sterner -- more-reasonable and forgiving -- stuff.

Of course, the money rolls in whether the message measures up the the very subjective, ever-changing, and tissue-thin 'standards' that Facebook applies selectively on any given day, too. So, really, who cares, right?

But, let's get back to that First Amendment, shall we?

All 'social media companies' seem to have a very strange relationship with the First Amendment. On the one hand, they claim to be providing a service that is intended to allow people to communicate all sort of things easily and effectively, and present themselves as Champions of Free Speech.

But on the other hand, they will -- and do -- censor material on the basis that someone's childish feelz have been raped, an opinion has been expressed that may be unpopular among the unwashed set, or which is (and this is generally the case) not understood by the people who have read them (because dumbfuck abounds).

And if you'll allow me a third hand for rhetorical purposes, 'social media', especially Facebook, has taken it upon itself to decide what constitutes 'acceptable' speech in the first place. It routinely 'fact-checks' reposted articles which is a bald-faced lie. What is being checked are not 'facts' but rather Facebook's  interpretation of what constitutes 'a fact'  -- guided mostly by a guess at the originator's intent, so what they've 'fact-checked' is an assumption of what they believe you meant, rather than the merit of what you've posted.

This is essentially a 'fact-check' of an assumption of another assumption -- and Facebook does this, it appears, in a very subjective and highly-partisan manner, pretending it is offering a public service to prevent the spread of 'false information' or 'fake news'.

And then Facebook pulls this cute psychological move wherein something that has been flagged as being 'partly false', it does not admit that what remains is 'mostly true'. The implication for the truly stupid is that if Facebook has decided (by what rules or methods, it will not reveal) one part is false, then the rest is poisoned by association, despite the possibility that it might be objectively and literally true.

This is Post-Modernism and Deconstruction at its finest, both operative principles for most people under 40. Who are provably retarded. Mere disagreement is enough to get something labeled 'false'.

The intent is not to divine the veracity of anything, it is to signal to people who also judge data subjectively that 'you don't want to read this'. Even to debate the 'partly false' is often forbidden, and when you read Facebook's 'explanation' of what the problem with a post or an article is, you get a recitation of contradictory Corporatese dribble or a convoluted statement from an unknown third party that essentially is a quibble over semantics. 

Almost never a verification of fact.

The idea that rational human beings can sift fact from fiction for themselves is taken by Facebook as a physical impossibility, you would think.

The 'fact-check' illusion gets applied to all manner of things: jokes, cartoons, scientific discussion-- does Facebook have a team of scientific experts on hand to evaluate scientific debate? Or does it rely, as it seems to, upon politically-connected NGO's and activist groups who have no scientific legitimacy, only political and social axes to grind? -- and political discussion is routinely censored, blocked, fact-checked, and 'Community Standard'-ed to death.

Defenders of the First Amendment who are facilitating Free Speech do not behave in this manner.

So, one must assume that for all the banter about the respecting of Free Speech, Facebook is lying. It easily uses it's esoteric status to jump from 'we're a platform/we're a publisher' arguments with great alacrity, and greatest selectivity.

Which leads me to another question that I'd very much like the answer to:

WHO decides what is acceptable, what is free speech, what is a fake news, not a fact, etc, etc.?

Surely there is a human being making these decisions, no? Are we at the mercy of an individual who may suffer from biases? Who just might be having a bad day? Is retaining water and feels lousy? Who may have an IQ below average?

Is this who is making decisions on what is permissible or not?

How many of the people who make these decisions aren't American, and so not familiar with American idiom, sense of humor, cultural expressions? How many of them aren't native English speakers? Do people like this get to decide who gets banned and who doesn't?

How much of this sort of thing is being done by poorly-programmed 'bots' and 'Artificial Intelligence' that is unable to distinguish things like context, humor, ethos, pathos, and so forth?

You can ask these questions until you're blue in the face, and Facebook doesn't answer them. 

Ever.

In my case, the statement "I hope all Afghans die" was added as a prefix to a copy of one of this blog's articles transferred to the blog's Facebook page. Did your 'bot' scan the article for context? If it did, was it sophisticated enough to discern any? Probably not, because Facebook is infamous for using H-1B labor, and in my extensive (37 years) IT industry experience, H-1B's are to good programming what heavy-duty laxatives are to a sanitary bathroom.

But Facebook will go on happily collecting and selling your personal data, banned or not, when such isn't stolen in any  number of well-publicized data breaches that Facebook fessed up to (probably because they couldn't hide 1+ billion user data breaches since 2009 any longer, and for no other reason).

But, enough application of logic. Let's put my statement "I hope all Afghans die" into a proper 'social media' context.

If you've been using these platforms for any appreciable length of time, you have seen all sorts of objectionable -- to the average person -- content that the platforms have deemed, for whatever reason, either acceptable or protected by free speech laws.

I remember the time when a woman 'live-tweeted' her abortion on Twitter, for example.

I can remember any number of beheading videos produced by ISIS, the Taliban, and other such groups all over YouTube.

I can remember videos of homosexuals tossed off rooftops all over the Middle East.

I can recall seeing many videos of people being burned alive.

Of police officers being ambushed by criminals.

When some 'lone wolf', 'self-radicalized' dipshit goes on a killing spree in your local gay bar, for example, we always discover that his 'self-radicalization' consisted of a steady diet of fiery speeches, violent videos, venomous polemic, that he accessed through 'social media'.

On any given day, media outlets are allowed to post articles and audio/video 'reports' that have no relation to reality, or regard for the 'facts' that Facebook so assiduously assures us it seeks. These aren't always 'far- ____' whacko sites or networks, either, but often 'mainstream' media outlets with billions of followers. These are never sifted, so far as I know, for their veracity or acceptability to any 'Community', at all, and yet, there they are.

I have seen, read, or heard multiple people -- through 'social media' -- call for the extermination of people on a variety of bases -- race, political affiliation, personal wealth or lack thereof, social class, sexual status or preferences, religion, all perfectly tolerable by Those Who Think They Know Better.

Individuals are attacked, slandered, targeted, all the time on these platforms -- and Facebook is notorious for this -- and no effort is seemingly made to ban anyone or flag their posts or 'fact-check' the fuck out of them. 

Of course, there's a double standard, and, of course the double standard is denied. Actually, there are multiple standards, and Facebook -- and all the rest -- trot them out as each is needed, but only in defense of themselves, not that I know of in the defense of free speech.

In the grand scheme of things, being banned from Facebook for 7 days is no big deal. I've had longer bans, and Facebook has often reduced my 'sentence' without explanation on many occasions. because Facebook loves me when I'm generating content, getting likes and emojis, and generating long discussion threads, because that means more money for Facebook.

Facebook, after all, generates no content of it's own; it has no product, really, to sell, and so depends on it's users to generate the content. Then it steals their personal data and the details of their lives and sells it to interested parties, which is why I get Lillian Vernon, Victoria's Secret and Vermont Teddy Bear catalogs I've never asked for, and why 76 Indians all named "Bob" or "Scott" ring my phones off the hook on daily basis asking questions about my medical or boat insurance, trying to sell me solar panels, or running a myriad of scams intended to get my Social Security number or access to my bank accounts or computers.

Facebook is a scam. It makes money on your content and personal data and doesn't pay you for it. It presents itself to the world as a service, but the only service being provided, it seems, is to cybercriminals, telemarketers, third-rate distributors of useless tchotchkes, and far from living up to it's promises of being a "Green Company", Facebook is probably responsible for more useless paper being printed upon, delivered in gas-powered mail vans, that simply finds itself in the landfill, unwanted, unread, and unnecessary in a day and age of electronic messaging and online ordering of goods and services.

How many millions of dollars of gasoline have been wasted? How many letter-carrier's backs have been broken hauling the excess weight of unwanted direct mail adverts? How many tons of CO2 and eroded rubber have been spewed into the atmosphere, how much wasted electricity, ink, staples, and whatnot, because Facebook sold all of your data to a battalion of direct-mail solicitors?

Actually, I can give you an idea because I've actually performed this experiment and discovered that, on average, my mailman is hauling around and delivering about 30 pounds of junk mail EVERY MONTH. And he's probably doing the same to all of my neighbors; letter carriers and mail systems all over the planet are creating this tremendous waste of energy, labor, materials, in this carbon-spewing exercise in futility.

What is Facebook's role in all of this? Gee, I wonder if anyone can 'fact-check' Facebook on this one?

I'd like everyone who reads this send me an example of an evil Facebook has perpetrated upon you, or that you know about. Please include proof, if possible. I will expose exactly what happens at Facebook if I have to short dick every phony-ass, virtue-signaling metrosexual in Menlo Park.

Send your experiences to Excelsior502@gmail.com. I will endeavor to post the worst excesses once a week.

Thanks!

As for every Afghan dying, I'm sure the Taliban will soon be helping many of them to achieve that goal.

UPDATE: Not two hours after this was posted, my ban was -- totally by coincidence, I'm sure -- extended to 30 days.