OP, I respectfully suggest that you revise the local rules, which currently ban the President of the United States from posting on this thread:

Quote from: PrimeNumber7 on June 24, 2020, 04:45:50 PM

This thread is self moderated and will be censored at a Twitter level

A million smug liberals nincompoops chorus in unison: “If Trump is banned from Twitter, he is free to go to Parler!”

Google, Apple, and Amazon: “LOL, ne Parler nul.”

N.b., I am obviously neither an American GOP type, nor a libertarian; and I detest Ayn Rand. Thus, it would be unwise to reply with strawmen based on positions that I have never held.

At least a few liberals are hold fast to their own stated principles, rather than wallowing in the doublethink and self-serving hypocrisy that are the hallmarks of modern “liberalism”. It is sickening to see the ad hominem attacks hurled at them for their failure to shut up and conform to the party line.

(Re the announcement of the Facebook permaban. Long tweet threads excerpted to a few brief selections.)

At this jucture, I must highlight the importance of Bitcoin to the freedom of speech. Financial censorship directly translates to the censorship of thoughts and ideas; for as a practical matter, systems of communication cost money to run.

Parler has a competitor who has far more experience with “deplatforming”: Gab. Overall, Gab is a fascinating study for those who are interested in censorship resistance. Hereby apropos, Gab would have gone bankrupt long ago, if not for Bitcoin.

Bitcoin is the only way to send money to Gab online. (They also accept cheques snailmailed to their postbox; but that is obviously a non-starter for an Internet startup.) And ever since Coinbase deplatformed them, they have used Bitcoin for real, with their own keys on their own node managed by BTCPayServer.

Quote from: Nicolas Dorier (speaking on the Stephan Livera show, 2019-01-20) https://stephanlivera.com/episode/48/

So, here is the thing, for example, Gab right now is using, Gab.com Is using a BTCPayServer and basically recently they have been targeted by political opponents to try to shut them down even if they did nothing wrong.

[...]

Gab.com before you trying to use BTCPay, like trying many other solution. Basically, they tried every single centralized payment processor that they called and like MasterCard, basically it was like pulling the strings to prevent them to service gab.com. At the end of the day, they become maximalist because that’s the only thing they… the only way for them to accept money then.

No matter what your political views, it is wise to recognize, as Mr Dorier evidently does, that free speech isn’t free unless it can be paid for. Someday, if financial institutions and Big Tech companies want to shut you up, Bitcoin could be your only hope for keeping your voice.

Go, Bitcoin, go!

Quote from: TwitchySeal on January 10, 2021, 09:10:51 PM

Come on man. Not long ago you were still putting effort into the 'I dislike both sides equally' charade.

You do me a calumny. I have presented Trump as Kerensky, and Biden as Lenin. Wherefore “Trump ≈ Biden”, not “Trump = Biden”. Perhaps my metaphor was too subtle for typical Americans, who are ignorant of both history and political theory; but that is not my problem.

America’s soft-pedalled October Revolution is a bad thing. Trump is not good. As I warned my American friends five years ago, he was never going to “save the country” or “make America great”. He is a big talker, and he says many of the right things; but he is a money-man and a playboy, a culturally degenerate parvenu in spirit, not a knight in shining armour. He has always been as such: It is who he is. But things can be worse...

Quote from: TwitchySeal on January 10, 2021, 09:10:51 PM

Now after Trump sends an angry mob to storm the capital and stop congress from counting the votes you're going to play the 'dems trying illegal coup!' card? Really? You know we know you know what a coup, sorry- coup d’État is, right?

Anyone who accuses Trump of having incited that riot is either a liar, or a fool who believes the liar-media mischaracterizations of Trump’s communications that are difficult to see for yourself, since Big Tech has been trying to wipe them off the Internet.

In Soviet America, Bolshevik Biden’s opposition is banned from the Internet

Back on topic: Biden memes!

Quote from: suchmoon on January 10, 2021, 10:47:41 PM

Hmmm, something is a bit off...

Quote from: suchmoon on January 10, 2021, 10:47:41 PM

FTFY. And at this point, my corrected text is barely hyperbole:

Per the above:
Quote from: suchmoon on January 09, 2021, 01:04:18 AM
Quote from: Gyfts on January 09, 2021, 12:30:23 AM
So where does this leave us? Probably down a dark road.
He can go to Parler if he doesn't want to be on Twitter.

Immediately after Trump was permabanned from Twitter, Parler was simultaneously deplatformed by Google and Apple (= the apps that average Americans know how to use) and Amazon (= their website). That really puts the lie to the “he can go to Parler” argument! The Big Tech oligarchs want to ban Trump and his supporters from the Internet, period.
For typical Ovine-Americans, social media are “the Internet”. If you believe in democratic principles (which I do not), you must acknowledge that it makes a farce of democracy when a major politician is suddenly kicked off the mass-communications systems that the masses actually know how to use.

Actually, come to think of it, depriving political opponents of means of communication is a classic move for a strongman dictator who hasn’t yet consolidated the power he needs to arrest them, or to have them shot.

If a political faction with rising power in a third-world banana republic restricted its opposition’s ability to use popular social media sites, what would you say about that? —Now, what is America? A “free country”? LOL!

(I myself was never on social media, because I frankly despise the masses and I do not care about influencing them. No, I am not a populist.)