February 21, 2012

I recently challenged Facebook CEO, Mark Zuckerberg to a duel of words.  I posted an image to my Facebook wall, along with thousands of other people, who posted the same image to their own walls.  Eventually, that image was taken down, from everyone’s wall, by Facebook.  The image wasn’t lewd, it wasn’t illegal, it wasn’t obscene, it was simply this:

A friend posted a comment on the image, and I typed out my response.  I hit enter, and it displayed a page that said the post had been deleted, or that I didn’t have permission to comment.  I frantically hit back, to try to see if I could salvage what I had written, but it was lost, along with the image, and everything else attached to the post.  In vain, I took this screenshot, which, if nothing else, marks the date and time:

 

The image I posted was poetry.  I’m a poet, dumb move to try to publish my stuff to a Facebook profile.

(At least now I’m a censored poet, which gives me like, unlimited bragging rights.)

My friend Sam had originally shared the photo to my feed, which enabled me to post it.  I went back to Sam’s profile, and it was gone there as well.

The next morning

About 12 hours later, the image was back up on everyone’s wall.  Here’s the post, after being mysteriously re-posted to my wall:

I carefully scrutinized the re-post, to see if anything had been subtlely edited, but it perfectly matched my memory of the original post.  It was as if the censorship had never happened.  I was still miffed about being muffled for a few hours,  but in the grand scheme of things, I didn’t feel very offended.  I still had a voice, and that’s what mattered to me.  I even felt a little embarrassed for making such a scene over a little glitch.

Later, maybe 24 hours after being originally deleted, and maybe 8 hours after being re-published to everyone’s profile, the image was deleted.  Again.  It’s now been down for 2 weeks and counting.

Positive and negative evidence

It is somewhat difficult to prove that something isn’t there.  Usually in science, we’re talking about things that we think are there, and we’re trying to get evidence that supports the idea that something is positively existing.  In this case, my task is to prove that something negatively exists, or doesn’t exist at all.  So forgive me if it’s not the most straightforward proof, but I think this should suffice.

Here’s a conversation with someone who reported the same experience.

 

 

I’m not just making this up, other people had this post deleted.

…and so I wrote them a strongly worded letter, which forced them to renounce their evil ways.

Below is a series of screenshots taken during the writing of this article.  This is my entire timeline, beyond the date of my discovery of the original censorship (February 7, 2012 at around 8pm).

As you can see, the post in question is not on my profile.  It’s not up today, and it has been down continuously (or at least as often as I have checked) since February 8.

I’m naturally skeptical of everything I encounter, and I expect that my readers share this same, noble quality.  Out of respect for thoroughness of evidentiary production, I submit to you the evidence of my censorship.

Closing thoughts

My first post on this topic contains the bulk of my thoughts on it.  I’ve already got a few rebuttals planned, if Zuckerberg ever does decide to respond.

I’m not one to dwell.  My mind moves quickly, and gets bored easily with the same topic.  I’m done dedicating posts to this topic, but I’ll be referencing it in the future.

I think that this case is a microcosm of something worse, and bigger, that’s happening.

The legal framework for totalitarianism is being laid in America.  We lost our right to a lawyer with the NDAA, and we’ll stand to lose our citizenship with the EEA (still in committee).

Transparency is the only way to save our society from the avalanche of rightslessness sweeping across our continent.  The governments of our world must become transparent.

1. Elections, specifically, must be transparent.

2. The details of all money received by any lawmaker must be transparent.

Transparency is a necessary characteristic of properly evolved societies.  My only political affiliation is that we need transparency, we need democracy, and we need to respect the right that all humans have to uncensored internet access.