I'm back in Facebook jail. This is my fourth time; I'd gone for years without any trouble, but in the last few months I've been suspended four times.
What was my offense?
Criticizing Bernie Sanders for selling out the progressive movement.
Now, the funny thing is that I've used almost the exact same words to criticize him on Facebook before with no pushback whatsoever from FB. I can only speculate as to the change in FB's response. My guess is that either I have a stalker (not impossible, it has happened before) who is reporting every controversial comment I post, or else Facebook has escalated their censorship standards. It's also possible that I'm on Facebook's watchlist, of course.
In any case, it reminds me of the old Soviet censorship that we used to hear about. It seems that we need to develop a samizdat network of our own; a way to be able to communicate without having Mark Zuckerberg's clammy hands clamped over our digital mouths.
The problem, of course, is that the three major social networks (Facebook, Reddit, and Twitter) are all subject to rigorous censorship by the oligarchy. Smaller ones aren't, but that's because their user base is so small that you might as well write your post on a piece of paper and flush it down the toilet. The oligarchy is perfectly happy to have us waste our time talking to nobody; it's only when we might rile up the sheep (as they see them) that they have their sheepdogs take us down.
It's a problem.
In the meantime, I've been posting on a very small new site called Leftbook.us. It desperately needs more users, but given that Facebook has been flat-out purging leftist groups there (and some libertarian/right groups, too), Leftbook seems like a good option. It's not a place to reach the unaffiliated, but it could be a good place to meet other leftists and organize - which is something that the oligarchs have spent a LOT of money to discourage.
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