Technology and Censorship Thread

    This topic (technology platforms) may need a separate forum, but for now here is this: Today marks Increasing censorship of discussion of religion at Twitter; Facebook won't be far behind. The examples listed here are not the kind of language "we" normally use, but it's only a thin line that probably won't hold for very long. I've never gotten much into using Twitter for outreach, but I am exploring alternate platforms, probably those based on the fediverse / mastodon technology. https://blog.twitter.com/offic…hatefulconductupdate.html


    So we can continue to expect Twitter and Facebook to allow the "global community" to have veto power over what we can discuss --


    Today I see this post, from an inoffensive low-carb diet podcaster whose work I have followed for years. Apparently his channel was just deleted from youtube. This is a lesson for us to keep numerous backups and never rely on the big tech players to protect us.

    Although not directly regarding censorship from big tech, I do frequently ponder on the ability to "live anonymously" while still engaging with the globally interconnected web and social media.


    There are privacy practices one can put in place of course, but the increasing tendency towards mass surveillance on one hand, coupled with things such as "cancel culture" due to mere disagreements and perceived slights is a bit concerning,

    My current thinking on all this is two-track. We need to engage on the public media so as to get the message out to others, but at the time same we need a back-channel fallback in place in case something happens. I'm really not concerned too much about the NSA or whoever reading what I have to say, but I am concerned that the deeply anti-"spiritual" and to some extent deeply anti-"establishment" implications of Epicurean philosophy would mark it for censorship if it ever became significantly popular.


    Right now I think we are about where we need to be at least in terms of having a foothold on the major platforms, but I am not comfortable that we have a workable backup plan to accord for Facebook suddenly banning the Epicurean groups and/or for example the hosting company for this website suddenly deciding that we are persona non grata.


    So I continue to be on the lookout for new systems where we might be able to both retain our anonymity but also be able to contact each other in the event that things were to really spin out of control.