Image by Gerd Altmann from PixabayThis is: A weekly column consisting of letters to my perspicacious progeny. I write letters to my grandkids and my great-grandkids — the Stickies — to advise them and haunt them after they've become grups and/or I'm deleted.
Warning: This column is rated SSC — Sexy Seasoned Citizens — A Perusal by kids, callowyutes, or grups may result in a debilitating intersectional triggering. Viewing with a tablet or a monitor is highly recommended for maximum enjoyment.
"If you can live on rice and beans you're uncancellable because you're always rich relative to your needs.” -Eric Weinstein
Dear (eventual) Grandstickies and Great-Grandstickies (and Gentlereaders),
Recently, Google, which I affectionately refer to as the Goog, canceled one of my columns for 24 hours. In fact, for some of those hours, my website warned a given he/she/they that if they accessed my site they might be in cyber danger.
{Is that like stranger danger? They probably think you're just another one of the squillion H. sapiens that use their blogging software and don't realize you're a world-famous columnist.}
Having said unkind things once or a hundred times about the Goog, the other tech oligarchs, and their Wokie minions, I assumed it was something I said.
{Well, privately-owned companies do have the right to restrict speech based on the clearly stated rules of the obscure, slippery, and ever-shifting rules laid out in the fine print.}
Indeed... and I'll come back to that.
As it turns out my temporary canceling, I was told, was because: "Your content has violated our Malware and Viruses policy." This was because of the content of a specific post titled Show Me the (Covid Relief) Money!
Criminy! What if I've run afoul of the Goog and The Fedrl Gummit? I ran around Casa de Chaos turning off lights and closing curtains. I was about to push the panic button and make a run for the armory when I realized we never got around to installing the panic button and we don't have an armory.
The post in question was temporarily disappeared. I found out later it was covertly spirited to a black site and not-tortured using the same methods the CIA (used to use?) to not-torture transnational Jihadies.
The next day I received an email from the Goog stating that "Upon review, the post has been reinstated." Apparently, a drunk algorithm made a mistake. While the column now has PTSD, it has willingly returned to my site.
BIG BUT.
I have to re-publish it (click on a button) to make it re-accessible to the public thereby confusing my millions of regular readers who have already read it. I think I shall hold on to it for now thus turning it into a priceless collector's item.
In the meantime, I've managed to get it waitlisted for a program at Johns Hopkins that has had much success (no, seriously) at treating PTSD and other disorders with "magic mushrooms." Rumors that I'm also trying, as the author of the piece, to have myself admitted to the program are absolutely true.
Please send emails of support to help me pitch Johns Hopkins. In the meantime, I've copied all of my columns onto flash drives that are stored in safe deposit boxes here, there, and of course, in Switzerland.
Now, as to the notion that the Goog, the other members of the tech oligopoly (and even the squillion wanna be/wish we were tech oligarchs) don't have to respect free speech because they're privately owned, I call bonkercockie.
Legally speaking, from what I was able to ascertain from a solid ten minutes of deep googlin', the legal consensus is that social media platforms are private companies and can censor what people post on their websites as they see fit.
However, there are myriad legal reasons and myriad laws at myriad levels of jurisdiction that prevent a given Woolworth's lunch counter from refusing to serve me just because I self-identify as an Afro-American lesbian named Coco, who in my mind's eye, could pass for Hale Berry's sister.
And Woolworth's is a privately owned company.
{I'm guessing myriad is the word of the week? It's a shame you can't find a way to get paid for that the way others get paid for inserting product links into what looks like innocent prose.
And by the by, legally speaking, you're comparing Esopus Spitzenberg apples to Cara Cara oranges, but I don't know where to even start... and Woolworth's has gone out of business.}
Are you sure? Perhaps that's why I can't find 99¢ 45s anymore.
I realize I've compared apples to oranges.
I was merely cleverly setting the stage for a big finish in which I marshall all sorts of dazzling, highly technical legal arguments as to why big tech shouldn't be allowed to censor speech but my research left me so dazed and confused I had to go lie down.
So permit me to insert a suffice it to say and say that given the monopolistic power of the Goog, Facebook, Twitter, etceterer, if they don't/won't find a way to resolve the problem (unlikely), they should be regulated like a public utility.
Given that they are or are becoming the primary information conduit for most Citizens of the Republic (and make lotza dough by selling data about some of us to others of us) they should have to follow first amendment case law just like (in theory anyway) The Fedrl Gummit does, and serve everyone at the information lunch counter.
{But that would require Congress to pass appropriate legislation.}
Indeed... Never mind.
I think I feel a migraine coming on. Sorry to waste your time, gentlereaders. God help us, every-one.
On the other hand...
As I've pointed out elsewhere this cacophonous kerfuffle could be easily reduced to a tempest in a teapot any time the oligarchs wanted. For example, require users prove who they are and register under their real names.
{What's next, having to have an ID to vote?}
But they would lose money once advertisers only had to pay for access to actual eyeballs and not virtual ones, and lawyers could sue malevolent and irresponsible eejits.
Howsabout a tightly monitored and controlled Google, FaceBook, YouTube, Twitter, etceterer paired up wide open, watch where you step, versions for grups only?
{There you go again, people would have to prove they're 18...}
In exchange, I'd let 'em use as many pseudonyms as they pleased and post whatever insanity they like. Trolls in paradise. But I'm thinking they should have to prove that they're 28.
Have an OK day
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Feel free to comment/like/follow/cancel/troll me on Cranky's Facebook page. I post my newest column there on Saturdays and interesting other stuff on other days.
Cranky don't tweet.
