In today's Neil Young's Archives (NYA) Times-Contrarian, author Phil Baker writes that Facebook's behavior is "worse than we had imagined".
The NYA Times-Contrarian article goes on to urge fans to delete their Facebook account and submit their experience to NYA for publication consideration.
Thanks for listening Neil! Should've been done long ago. Here's our story below, which your team is well aware.
Short story: Mark Zuckerberg (CEO FACEBOOK): Liar? Idiot? Or Both?.
Earlier this year, we covered Neil Young's Big Decision On Archives: Facebook and Social Responsibility. Reaction was significant, with many Neil fans reporting similar experiences with the Great Social Media Whorehouse (sorry to offend whores).
In the parlance of our times, "fake news" is a fake construct designed to deflect from the actual, REAL truth. (See The Illusion of The Matrix Shatters: Corruption, Fake News & The Big Shift.)
The NYA Dilemma?
Once again, Neil Young speaks truth to power as he faces a "big decision" on access to his Archives due to Facebook's lack of social responsibility.
In a recent posing on NYA Times-Contrarian, Neil Young writes that:
"Censorship is a big responsibility and the Social Media Giant is seemingly not up to defending democracy, at least not yet."
The issue of tech giants and censorship has come up previously and it appears to have reached a cross-roads -- not just with Neil -- but with virtually all things internet related. In February, Neil Young wrote that tech giants rip off artists, who are being forced to distribute their music in the digital world. (And this is just one more reason why we sing this song because we love the man.)
And our advice to Mr. Young?
Ditch Facebook.
Ditch Facebook before Facebook ditches you, Neil. You'll be glad you did.
Why?
We'll go into that below.
Thrasher's Wheat | Facebook
http://www.facebook.com/thrashers.wheat - Suspended Since July 2015
http://www.facebook.com/thrashers.wheat - Suspended Since July 2015
As long time Thrasher's Wheat readers know, we have had confrontations with Facebook over the years since being suspended in 2015. (See An Open Letter to Mark Zuckerberg, CEO FACEBOOK and An Open Letter (#2) to Mark Zuckerberg, CEO FACEBOOK.)
Facebook: An Epic Orwellian Fail
Image via 21st Century Wire
Tech Giants, we the people, do NOT trust you. You guys have blocked us, shadow banned us, de-monetized us, de-platformed us, memory-holed us, and harassed/trolled us relentlessly. But all of your efforts have failed -- we're still standing. Enough.
Eyes Wide Shut, Mouth Closed
"They" have tried to take us down by canceling our advertising partnerships, or blocking our ability to run Google Ads, or hacking our Twitter account, or filing fraudulent transactions on our PayPal account, or disrupting the ISP service of our partner WBKM.org and Thrasher's Wheat Radio, or screwing around with our Amazon partner links, or jerking us around about Willie for a Nobel, capping our LIKES below 30K and unsub'g folks automatically, throttled our once robust reader comments eco-system suspending the Gigs for the Gulf page based on false copyright infringement claims, trying to make exposing environmental crimes a crime, disrupting freedom of speech and assembly, or humiliating and mocking our efforts when we try and stand up, algorithmic censorship to lower our rank off of Top 10 Search results or gaslighting us with "fake Neil news", sending in all sorts of trolls and spammers to disrupt the Neil community, or making exposing a war crime a war crime or blasting us with near Stuxnet-like levels of crippling attacks on our servers, dropped from Google News as a legitimate (non-fake) news source and on & on...
Is that the best you got? We're still here. Just remember, TW has been around longer than Google, Amazon or Facebook. The corruption on the highest floors will cease and Justice will triumph. The Truth and The Light will always prevail and overwhelm the darkest of the Darkness of Corruption.
Social media can often be seen as serving as the direct prophecy of George Orwell's 1984 novel's "Two Minutes of Hate".
(Note, if you found the above clip puzzling, "Watch The Dystopian World of 1984 Explained" on YouTube @ https://youtu.be/GQxOKXEff4I. In George Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, the Two Minutes' Hate is a daily period in which Party members of the society of Oceania must watch a film depicting the Party's enemies (notably Emmanuel Goldstein and his followers) and express their hatred for them.
In case anyone is interested, here is what Goldstein actually says in that scene (you can't make it out, cause the crowd is shouting over it, but that's what he says according to the subtitles)
"Nothing the Party says is true. Nothing the Party does is good. Even the war itself isn't real. The Party wants you to believe we are at war so as to channel your aggression away from their rightful target: the Party.
Big Brother is not real. He is pure fiction, created by the Party. The real rulers of the State are unknown, faceless manipulators who, because they are not known are able to wield power without let or hindrance. People of Oceania, you are being duped.
The Party doesn't serve the people — it serves itself.
We are not at war with Eurasia. You are being made into obedient, stupid slaves of the Party. Open your eyes. See the evil that is happening to you. The Party drops bombs on its own citizens.
It is the Party, not the Eurasians, who are our enemies."
"Open your eyes. See the evil that is happening to you.")
As usual, everyone supports freedom of speech -- as long as it aligns with their views and politics. It's an angry world but we won't quit...
ps - And "Thank You" Mr. Zuckerberg for suspending our FaceBook account, saving us from all of your FB troll-bot zombie hordes (not referring to rusties)! Or Mr. Z - Liar? Idiot? Or Both?.
"First they came for Thrasher's Wheat,
and I didn’t speak up, because I wasn’t a Neil Young fan.
Then they came for Alex Jones,
and I didn’t speak up, because I wasn’t a white male conspiracy theorist.
Then they came for Oprah Winfrey,
and I didn’t speak up, because I wasn’t a black female social justice warrior.
Then they came for Neil Young,
and I didn’t speak up, because I was Donald Trump voter.
Then they came for me,
and by that time there was no one left to speak up for me."
and I didn’t speak up, because I wasn’t a Neil Young fan.
Then they came for Alex Jones,
and I didn’t speak up, because I wasn’t a white male conspiracy theorist.
Then they came for Oprah Winfrey,
and I didn’t speak up, because I wasn’t a black female social justice warrior.
Then they came for Neil Young,
and I didn’t speak up, because I was Donald Trump voter.
Then they came for me,
and by that time there was no one left to speak up for me."
MODIFIED ~~ Rev. Martin Niemoller, 1945
Open up the tired eyes. Eyes wide shut, we tried to lay it all out very specifically just prior to the 2016 election. And then clarified any mis-understandings shortly after the 2016 election. And yet again at the 2018 mid-terms.
No fear... never stand down ... The Big Shift crushes it... wake up and open the Tired Eyes...
'She was welded to the eagle's beak
and said, "truth is all i seek" '
~~"Sun Green" by Neil Young
ps - and if you still really want to know how we feel about all of this, we have all been here before, we have all been here before...
So don't do it Neil. Just say no to Big Brother.
peace & love,
thrasher and thrashette
..... stand tall & free, Thrasher !
ReplyDeleteInteresting that Neil not only has maintained his Facebook page (despite what the new posting says), but also has added one for the Archives:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.facebook.com/NeilYoung/
https://www.facebook.com/NeilYoungArchives/
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDelete“Extremely radical defense and encouragement of free speech is one of the very most important and honorable actions!!!”...RV
ReplyDeleteIn the 1960’s as a young boy in my dad‘s small town bar in Iowa, I would always hear these World War I and World War II veterans saying the following.
“We need to get a GD’d businessman in there and not a politician, and that’s what America just did, it sure helped my wallet and the wallets of my middle class neighbors.”
Randy Vaughn
Hippie Dream Productions
PS... A year ago I deleted my Facebook, Twitter, Google etc. accounts... It feels good!!!
Never did Facebook or Twitter or Instagram or anything else and never will. Owning a smartphone I’ve already sacrificed my civil rights enough.
ReplyDelete@mark - we're trying!
ReplyDelete@ Babbo - Neil hasn't updated his regular FB page in months. But you're right there does seem to be a new FB Archives page. yes, it does seem odd.
@ RV - like your 1st quote and couldn't agree more.
@ Dan - yep, it seems that Smartphones are to become the devil's bargain, sadly. We never gave FB any personal data on our account which is why we feel TW got suspended with the bogus "fake identity" flag.
Unless folks stop giving away their personal data, the Beast will only grow. Fresh data is the blood upon which The Beast feasts. Starve the monster and the monster will die.
The NYT article is somewhat shocking in that it really does take on Zuckerberg & Sandberg conspiracy to control discourse on the platform while simultaneously taking the position that FB is just a mere platform -- not a publisher.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/14/technology/facebook-data-russia-election-racism.html
This LTE sums it up:
fram1
roslyn, nyNov. 15
Times Pick
This article buries what seems to be the most shocking revelation: That Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg themselves actually hired a company to defend Facebook via an anti-Semitic disinformation campaign pushing a fake George Soros conspiracy theory. That's utterly unacceptable!
Anti-Semitic narratives have serious social consequences - ranging from the undermining of political ideas to actual violence. What are these people thinking??? Facebook is not that important. They need to get a grip, and the rest of us need to let them know that this will not be permitted.
Sadly the smart phone has taken over the world. It’s just the NEW normal and as I’ve stated before, you can’t un-ring a bell. The bell has been rung and now we must face the consequences. Yes the technology is wonderful, but at the cost of OUR civil rights. Most people are honest hard working folks who are just going through life without any intention of causing trouble, so therefore don’t see a problem. Yet the knowledge that everything you do and say on these devices is being monitored globally 24/7. Now that in itself is a violation of our civil rights to our privacy as US citizens. If there are people who are okay with this then they need to study the history of Hitler, Mussolini, Marx, and Gengis Khan to name just a few. This technology, as wonderful as it is, flies in the face of our Constitutional rights, yet like lemmings we ALL (myself included) just jumped on board without consideration for the ramifications.
ReplyDeleteTechnology has been and always will be a double edged sword, equal parts good and bad, but we citizens of OUR world need to consider what’s really important. I personally think that living in a free society with the rights listed in the US Constitution is more important than simplifying our ability to take a selfie and instantly send it to aunt Bessy in some town a thousand miles away in a split second.
We’ve let the genie out of the bottle and now we can’t go back, ever. But it’s never too late for powerful positive change, because there are more of US than THEM and all it takes is a United effort to restore OUR civil rights here in the US of A and the rest of the world will follow suit.
Thanks for caring.
Peace to ALL
@Thrasher: Just FWIW, the latest posts on the main Neil Young FB page are dated Nov. 12, Nov. 6 and Oct. 31, though the most recent before that was Aug. 3 (he was posting pretty regularly through April, then dropped off, though he certainly hasn't closed his account like Phil Baker's NYA piece says). The Archives page has picked up the slack, with seven posts since launching Nov. 6.
ReplyDelete@ Dan - love the passion. never lose it or let them take it away.
ReplyDelete@Babbo - ok, we stand corrected. so, who is Phil Baker? It says by Phil Baker at top and signed NYA at bottom.
Is Phil a NYA staff writer? Kind of curious that Neil would turn over his page to others to share opinions on this area. Recordings, tech topics, etc, sure.
Phil Baker was a main person in the development of the Pono player. Here's his web page:
ReplyDeletehttps://bakerontech.com
OK, good to know. Thanks PJs!
ReplyDeletevia https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-12-31/2018-greatest-hits-most-popular-articles-past-year-and-look-ahead
ReplyDelete"While we find the narrative of fake news laughable, after all every single article in this website is backed by facts and links to outside sources, we find it a dangerous development, and a very slippery slope that the entire developed world - is pushing for what is, when stripped of fancy jargon, internet censorship under the guise of protecting the average person from "dangerous, fake information."
To preserve its counter-establishment aura, it goes without saying that the current administration should overturn this blatant attack on the First Amendment, and let people decide for themselves what is and isn't fake news. If anything, it is the conventional, mainstream media, most of which is owned by a handful of corporations with extensive ties to the government, that demonstrated on many occasions in 2018 that it is the primary creator and distributor of "fake news", something which has not escaped the broader US population the majority of which no longer has trust in the conventional news media."