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Again: How Does One Ethically Respond When One’s Friends Are Slipping Into The Throes Of Madness?

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

Nah, the Trump Deranged aren’t losing their frickin’ minds…

That’s the most recent cartoon from Ann Telnaes, that witty, subtle, objective and non-partisan political cartoonist who quit the Washington Post who didn’t think her juvenile submission was worth publishing. So now she’s operates from her substack, issuing brilliant art like that. Incredibly, one of my oldest and most accomplished friends posted that crap—it’s the equivilent of a schoolboy drawing of the unpopular kid with blacked out teeth and horns—with approval on his Facebook page, where his decision was roundly praised as he revealed that he subscribed to her visual hate-fests. This is the equivalent of someone announcing that he has decided to subscribe to the “Turd of the Week” service. Another equally rational, intelligent Facebook friend until he went bonkers posted a long, irrelevant quote from the Nuremberg trials about the nature of fascism, and everyone metaphorically nodded and applauded as if it has anything to do with current events.

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And As Long As We Are Talking About Doing The Right Things For (Perhaps) the Wrong Reasons: Zuckerberg and Meta

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

Mark Zuckerberg, the Facebook founder and its alter-ego Meta’s chief executive, announced that his flagship social media platform, along with Instagram and Threads, will end its longstanding (and biased, and flawed) fact-checking program, moving instead to a “community notes” system like the one employed by Elon Musk’s reinvention of Twitter.

Good. What took so long?

“It’s time to get back to our roots around free expression,” Zuckerberg said. The company’s current fact-checking system had “reached a point where it’s just too many mistakes and too much censorship.” “The reality is that this is a trade-off,” he said. “It means that we’re going to catch less bad stuff, but we’ll also reduce the number of innocent people’s posts and accounts that we accidentally take down.”

In truth, anyone should have been able to figure out that Facebook’s “fact checkers” were progressive, dishonest, partisan hacks. The censors included Snopes (EA dossier here) and PolitiFact (even worse dossier here), which Ethics Alarms, among many others, had marked as biased and untrustworthy years ago, indeed well before Facebook turned to them as censors. The truth is that one person’s “bad stuff” is another’s stimulating opinion or analysis. This shouldn’t be a difficult concept, but in the Age of the Great Stupid, it is. The 21st Century Left likes censorship, indeed has relied on it to hold power, and has embraced the practice on college campuses, social media, and in the news. Sad but true.

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An “Ethics Quiz: The Brainwashed Democrat Friend” Sequel! Another Brainwashed Friend Says “Hold My Beer…”

/ Jack Marshall / 26 Comments

I woke up in the middle of the night to check something and found this rant on my Facebook feed:

So, just so we’re clear- I get it, you don’t like Kamala or Tim. Not your first choice, etc., etc.
So, I ask you this as you hem and haw: cut into the only chance this country has to rid itself once and for all of an openly racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, incompetent tyrant who has given a voice to the worst parts of our culture; to keep this rapist and felon from returning to power, this time with people who are focused on carrying out his Agenda – Whatever might happen if we’re to have a Harris/Walz presidency, how in any possible way is that worse than what four more years of this man and what he represents can bring? HOW?
To vote otherwise (Republican or Independent), to criticize to the point of damage, to abstain, is nothing more than serving one’s ego.
By 2028 the world will gladly continue on after slicing up what remains of the United States of America, and while I understand every single one of your arguments regarding the history of this country – and agree with a good many of them – for all the reasons you want to see a future that has better things than the past, put down all your grievances, or at the very least anything that will prevent this duo from taking the reins and JUST GET THEM THERE.
We can rightly start to work when we are sure there’s something left to work with, because if you don’t know that the alternative will leave us with less than nothing (and not for long at that), you’re complicit in a way that can not and will not be forgiven by history, your families and very likely, because chances are you are someone with a decent heart who gives a shit, yourself.
Blue. That’s it. That’s all. Right now. Do it.

The writer is a much closer friend and of longer duration than the one I discussed in yesterday’s Ethics Quiz. He’s also in professional theater, but, believe it or not, is a lawyer—you know, the profession that supposedly reveres precision analysis. Another interesting wrinkle: he’s Jewish, and promoting a Presidential candidate who wants to impose a “permanent” cease-fire in Gaza. You may remember, and I’m certain he does, how the last supposedly permanent cease fire in Gaza ended, on October 7, 2023.

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Ethics Dunce: Chaya Raichik

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

Chaya Raichik, the industrious conservative gadfly who infuriates the Left by posting the most ridiculous and self-indicting TikTok videos by unhinged progressives, definitely has a nasty side. Exposing public figures, celebrities, local officials, scholars, professors, teachers, corporate execs, prominent athletes, “influencers,” Hollywood stars and would-be activists is an admirable (and useful) pursuit—after all, they post the stuff that makes them look ridiculous or sinister and know that what they say gets noticed. Such statements also often demonstrate why they should not continue in their chosen professions. Siccing the social media mob on a typical working American who posts something dumb on Facebook is very different. It is cruel.

Recently Raichik’s Libs of TikTok account has expanded its target range to private Facebook posts that included ugly comments on the near assassination of Donald Trump. (I could point her to some by my Trump-Deranged friends.) “To bad they weren’t a better shooter!!!!!” was the witty if ungrammatical retort Darcy Waldron Pinckney posted on Facebook to her modest number of FB friends. She worked at Home Depot, but not after the influential anti-woke warrior launched her (also misspelled) “quip” into cyberspace hyperdrive. A week ago, Raichik posted a screenshot of Pinckney’s comment with her photo (above) and wrote, “Hi @HomeDepot! Are you aware that you employ people who call for political violence and the ass*ss*nat*on of Presidents? Any comment?”

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Comment of the Day: “From the Res Ipsa Loquitur Files: the Woke Shackles Tighten…”

/ Jack Marshall / 35 Comments

I wanted to get the previous post about artificial intelligence and the unintended consequences of technology up before this timely Comment of the Day by jdkazoo123 from yesterday regarding social media. Mark Zuckerberg didn’t consider all of the social pathogens he was loosing on civilization when he launched Facebook, or even if he foresaw some of them, he went ahead anyway. After all, there were millions of dollars to be made. The message of this COTD is, in brief, “Now what?”

The alarm as well as the puzzlement are justified. Still, one cannot pretend that the benefits that Zuck and others believed were being conferred on society by social media are insubstantial. I’ve experienced one of them very recently: through Facebook I have been able to let my friends, associates and colleagues know about the tragic sudden death of my wife, and to say that the support they are still providing me has been crucial to my sanity and survival is an understatement. Social media also has greatly reduced the power and influence of journalism, which, since journalists have been abusing those and the public’s trust for decades, is a win for truth, justice, and the American way. Nevertheless, the negative effects of the platforms are substantial, as jd notes. Are these benefits worth the costs? Don’t ask me right now: I’m biased.

Here is jdkazoo123’s Comment of the Day on the post, “From the Res Ipsa Loquitur Files: the Woke Shackles Tighten…”

***

I don’t know if this is a reason to regulate social media, but it is an example of why they are so different and troubling. I think they are a big cause of the polarization that we see here at EA and across the country. I think about my dad and his brother, my uncle. Even though my uncle was 7 years older, they were very close by the time I showed up. I grew up seeing my uncle about 1-2 a year. And as I got older, I noticed my dad and his brother joshed a lot about politics. My uncle was hard core Republican from suburban Pittsburgh, an executive in manufacturing. My dad was a solid Democrat working in military intelligence and the AF reserves. It was fun to see them josh. My uncle would say “Kid, your dad thinks I’m a Republican because I’m rich. What he doesn’t understand is I’m rich because I’m a Republican!”

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RFK Jr. Supporters Are Going To Sue Meta (Facebook, Instagram). Good!

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

Oopsie! Meta, the monster (in many senses of the word) parent company of social media giants Facebook and Instagram, blocked the link to a new, 30-minute infomercial supporting the candidacy of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., the rebel independent Presidential candidate whom Democrats wish they could vaporize with their bad thoughts. Meta says it was a “mistake.”

Maybe it was. The embargo didn’t last long: the ad was only unavailable from late afternoon last Friday to the middle of last Saturday. A spokesman for Meta said the link had been incorrectly flagged as spam. For some reason, RFK Jr.’s campaign and supporters don’t trust Meta. Tony Lyons, a founder the super PAC that paid for the ad, says his group plans to sue Meta in federal court for censorship and First Amendment violations.

“When social media companies censor a presidential candidate, the public can’t learn what that candidate actually believes and what policies they would pursue if elected,” Mr. Lyons said. “We are left with the propaganda and lies from the most powerful and most corrupt groups and individuals.”

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Regarding “The Appeaser’s Apology”

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

In last week’s open forum, there was discussion regarding this incident:

During his testimony in a U.S. Senate hearing on social media and its negative effect on children, Meta founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg responded to a question inquiring whether he had taken any action to mitigate the problem, such as firing employees, providing compensation to alleged victims or apologizing to the families of people who were harmed by posts on Facebook or Instagram, which his company also owns. In response, Zuckerberg stood up, turned to an audience including parents holding up pictures of loved ones, and said,

“I am sorry for everything that you have gone through. It’s terrible. No one should have to go through the things your family has suffered. And this is why we invested so much and will continue doing industry leading efforts to make sure that no one has to go through the types of things your families have had to suffer.”

Tasked (by himself) with deciding where this statement falls on the Ethics Alarms Apology Scale, commenter JutGory opined,

It almost looks like a Number 8 (A forced apology for a rightful or legitimate act, in capitulation to bullying, fear, threats, desperation or other coercion.), except that Zuckerberg is not apologizing for a rightful or legitimate act. The Legislators were ascribing acts to him when he did nothing.

It also looks like a 10 (An insincere and dishonest apology designed to allow the wrongdoer to escape accountability cheaply, and to deceive his or her victims into forgiveness and trust, so they are vulnerable to future wrongdoing.), except that, again Zuckerberg is not apologizing for something he did.

I think the Apology Scale needs another collateral entry that does not actually fit on the scale: The Appeaser’s Apology: A forced apology offered in response to a baseless accusation of wrongdoing because the person demanding the apology is too stupid or self-righteous to bother reasoning with.

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Ethics Quote Of The Month: Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky)

/ Jack Marshall / 90 Comments

I was literally going to start this post with nearly the exact same statement, except I was going to ask how many progressives and die-hard Biden defenders would have the integrity to condemn the revelation that Facebook and Instagram censored posts and changed their content moderation policies after unconstitutional pressure from the Biden White House.

Not that this should have surprised anyone; it certainly didn’t surprise me, Censorship, deception and suppression of news, facts and reality is how the current mutation of the Democratic Party rolls, and Big Tech and social media have joined the mainstream media as their enablers and accomplices.

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Call Me A Stickler, But I Don’t Want Anyone Who Talks Like This Deciding What Is Acceptable Speech, Discourse Or Opinion…

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, said this during an interview on the “Lex Fridman Podcast”about his discovered wisdom about the difficulty of censoring social media:

“So misinformation, I think, has been a really tricky one because there are things that are obviously false, right, or they may be factual but may not be harmful. So are you gonna censor someone for just being wrong? If there’s no kind of harm implication of what they’re doing? There’s a bunch of real issues and challenges there.  Just take some of the stuff around COVID earlier in the pandemic where there were real health implications, but there hadn’t been time to fully vet a bunch of the scientific assumptions. Unfortunately, I think a lot of the kind of establishment on that kind of waffled on a bunch of facts and asked for a bunch of things to be censored that, in retrospect, ended up being more debatable or true. And that stuff is really tough, right? It really undermines trust,”

Oh for God’s sake….Observations:

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Facebook Censors Me (Again): My Response

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

I posted that idiotic thing above on Mark Zuckerberg’s Monster after reading that the Fake Australia conspiracy was a “thing” among flat-earth types—you know, morons. Although I yield to no one in the strength of my conviction that stupidity lies wide, long and deep upon this nation (see today’s earlier post), there must be limits, so I shared it with my alleged Facebook friends with the question, “Is it possible that some people really believe this?” while adding that my sister honeymooned in Australia, or at least I thought she did. Facebook promptly slapped this on my post and took it down.

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