Guest essay by Eric Worrall
h/t Dr. Willie Soon; Facebook have upped the ante in their ongoing challenge to the limits of Section 230 of the Communication Act, part of the law which shields social media giants from lawsuits over posts which contain libellous content, yet allows them to remove “offensive” material, by upping their intrusion into the private and public communications of members.
The next front in Facebook’s misinformation battle: climate change
By Clare Duffy, CNN Business
Updated 1409 GMT (2209 HKT) November 7, 2021New York (CNN Business)In August 2019, when a Facebook employee typed “climate change” into the platform’s search bar, the auto-fill suggestions that popped up included “climate change debunked” and “climate change is a hoax.” The results prompted the employee to ask in a post on the company’s internal site: “Do our policies combatting the spread of misinformation on Facebook apply to climate denialism?”
…
The documents highlight how, for years, some employees of the social media company — which recently changed its name to Meta — have raised alarms about climate change misinformation spreading on its platforms, and called on the company to do more to crack down on it.
On Monday, the company’s VP of Global Affairs, Nick Clegg, announced in a blog post additional steps Facebook is taking to address climate change, including expanding informational labels on some posts about climate change to more than a dozen countries.
…
Experts, however, say the stakes could not be higher for Facebook to further ramp up its solutions for this problem — and soon.
“Given that [climate change] is an existential threat, we can’t be casual about the seriousness about the threat of climate misinformation,” said John Cook, a research assistant professor at the Center for Climate Change Communication at George Mason University. “It needs to be addressed with the same level of urgency and proactiveness that they’re showing with Covid-19 and election misinformation.”
…
Read more: https://edition.cnn.com/2021/11/07/tech/facebook-climate-change-misinformation/index.html
The problem with Section 230 appears to be the definition of “offensive” is too vague.
I think most people would agree social media companies should be allowed to remove say child pornography videos, or videos of perverts filming themselves gang raping adult victims, but Facebook and other activist social media companies appear to want to extend this definition of “offensive” to include discussing theories they don’t like about the origins of Covid, the effectiveness of vaccines, what happened during the last Presidential election, and now, discussion of the causes of climate change.
Are these topics really offensive in the sense that child pornography is offensive? Or are Facebook and other social media giants completely out of control, abusing a weak section 230 law to impose arbitrary censorship on users?
Society really needs to make a decision about what speech is permitted, and what speech social media giants are allowed to censor.
To many people, social media communications are like phone calls. Imagine if you were say discussing current affairs with a friend on the phone, and suddenly a robot voice intruded, explaining a comment you just made conflicted with a fact check?
How is that different to say Facebook intruding on a closed discussion with friends, taking down or downgrading the visibility of posts, or adding their intrusive and in my opinion frequently questionable fact checks? Is it reasonable to do this, even with a public discussion? Are we really a society where it is appropriate to have Facebook censors interrupting private and public conversations with a big megaphone, shouting “fact checks” into the public square?
There is no doubt the heavy handed censorship by Facebook and other social media giants has a chilling effect on legitimate conversation and discovery of new information.
Look at Facebook’s treatment of the Covid lab leak hypothesis. Facebook suppressed suggestions Covid leaked from a lab in Wuhan, until the suppression of this increasingly mainstream theory got embarrassing, then they shamelessly backflipped and lifted the ban.
Facebook: People Are Now Permitted to Speculate Covid-19 Leaked from a Laboratory
Suppression of free speech is dangerous. Chinese suppression of free speech, arresting and intimidating doctors who tried to warn the world, allowed the Wuhan outbreak to grow into a global pandemic.
In my opinion Facebook’s abuse of censorship has strayed dangerously close to the CCP’s level of high risk suppression, through their manipulation and suppression of legitimate discussion about the origins of Covid. How does Facebook’s suppression of the Covid lab leak theory qualitatively differ from CCP suppression of the original medical warnings from Wuhan?
Unless the ambiguity and weakness of US decency laws is addressed, organisations like Facebook will continue in their hubris to impose their views about what speech is permissible on society, for in my opinion frequently opaque reasons, without having to explain themselves, while still enjoying the protection of Section 230.
There is a reason the founding fathers enshrined freedom of speech in the US Constitution. They recognised the anti-democratic nature of denying people access to facts and viewpoints, in order to manipulate the opinions and actions of ordinary people. The Founding Fathers knew the danger to civic society, of concentrating the power to decide what opinions can be expressed, into the hands of one person or a small group of people.
Next time social media giants make a mistake, and interrupt free flow of information because one of their politically radical employees has a hissy fit, the consequences for society might be far worse than the consequences of interrupting a legitimate academic discussion about the true origin of a horrible virus.
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So, um, are they going to censor “climate change misinformation” such as John Cook saying climate change “is an existential threat”, which is absolutely false?
Or ANY post about CC from the Obama White House..
People need to get off Facebook. I know it’s hard, but people need to try.
Never got on. Not any Social Justice Network. Two decades TV free means more time to read.
I was on Facebook for about a month or so maybe 10 years ago.
The only reason I got on it all was because a girl that I gave away at her wedding put their honeymoon pictures on Facebook and sent an invite to join so I could see them.
I enjoyed the pictures but I was then deluged with “friend request”. Most were from people I saw every week but some were from people I hadn’t seen in years.
All I had time to do was accept the request.
I did that for weeks. I decided to cancel my account. But I found out that if you cancel your account Facebook doesn’t tell all your friends that you canceled your account. It sends out a message that they were “unfriended”.
So, aside from a message about enjoying the pictures. I put up a message explaining how Facebook operated and that I was cancelling my account in 2 weeks. They were all still my friends no matter what Facebook says.
The hilarious thing about farcebook is the shrill yelling of Social Justice Warriors whenever it allows ANY kind of political posts that are to the right of Stalin
Please “God” save us from the ideological abuse of language! Every single time I hear “existential threat” uttered by anybody no matter how famous, powerful, educated or supposedly intelligent I want shove an existential dictionary up there existential fundamental!
It amounts to pure doublespeak because it means the exact opposite of what you think it means no matter what you think in means!
Existential means – quite literally – in your own mind! Therefore the threat is not real but imaginary; an existential threat! The secondary meaning of existential is real (Or exists), as in a real threat. Existential is a technical term in philosophy that refers to what is immanent, that is to say in your own mind or in your own head.
This is why, when Tony Blair announced -verbally- that weapons of mass destruction were an immanent/imminent threat, you could never be shore what he meant. Immanent (with an “a”) is all in your own head and imminent (with an “i”) is a real and immediate threat. These two different words have opposite meanings in the context, therefore he was employing the purest form of political doublespeak!
Please, stop using the planted words of ideologues. Just speak plainly and directly, say what you mean and never use ambiguous language because it is the surest path to Hell.
YES! I have been saying this since the first time I heard existential used referring to the faux threat of CAGW. Now, thanks to media and other morons using the word with such authority, its meaning has become clouded in the minds of many. English may be a living language but this is silly, we already have a lot of perfectly good words that mean what they all seem to think existential means.
My sophomore year at one of the top Jesuit HS’s in the US, my Theology class was about “Existentialism”.
I don’t think they know what that word means.
(But it’s long enough and obscure enough that those who buy it probably don’t know what it means either. But it sounds important!)
Also the greenhouse gas effect – which is fake science, based on an illegitimate mathematical model. Can’t see Facebook censoring that.
j cook opens gab
nothing true is said
What about the 3%?
Frances Haugen probably wouldn’t insist on that. The so called FB whistleblower said nothing about John Cook causing chaos.
Facebook/Meta has had problems, both with their own leftist employees and the Democratic Party activists in government threatening.to institute the sort of regulation Facebook has been trying to avoid. The Republican consensus is that Section 230 only applies to a neutral forum, that political editing is a violation.
The Democrats want good little doobies, who will label anything not proper in their circles “hate speech”, and ban it. As Zuckerberg and his management have hired mostly people sympathetic with the Democrat position, I have serious doubts as to Zuckerberg being even a libertarian on this issue.
Facebook goes into Metastasis. As they have the bulk of their users in India they should be careful as these depend on reliable electricity to charge their mobile phones and run their modems going too far along with Climate Change nonsense. Profit – bigger loss = loss.
love it !!metastasis
fkbk IS a CANCER on the planets pcs etc
I believe I read not too long ago that 40 percent of Facebook’s employees were actual citizens of India, working in the United States.
“I have serious doubts as to Zuckerberg being even a libertarian on this issue.”
Facebook does not censor any leftwing posts. That ought to tell you all you need to know about Facebook management’s political leanings.
Odd thing is that, in the past, Zuckerberg has said some eminently sensible things, suggesting that he really does get it. And then his giant company continues to travel in the opposite direction.
Quite apart from being confused about what he really believes, I think he has almost completely lost control of the monster he created.
Do as I do – don’t use social media sites. If you have an account, cancel it. You can live a perfectly fine life without Facebook.
I still have a FB account, but haven’t been on it in years. I had a TWITter account for a short time, tried to use it for local traffic reporting, since we’re kind of out in the boonies, accidents and such don’t make it to Seattle news, unless it’s REALLY bad. But even a simple accident at the Deception Pass Bridge can cause hours of backups.
But it didn’t pan out, no volunteers. So I cancelled that account. I got onto Parler just before they were cancelled, but that’s really it.
I use Twitter to follow news on the Scottish football team I’ve followed for 65 years which despite winning a cup double last year rarely breaksunto anything published by the BBC. Several fans post stuff which means I am not titally out of touch.
(Another reason I think they’rena crap organisation despite winning more trophies than the Old Firm combined it didn’t get a mention on “Football Focus”)
I agree I hate facebook
the sooner it is deconstructed
twitter
Whats app etc
then shut down meta
I do wonder what Metalons will be actioning about other religions and their misinformation about the existence of an all-mighty, miracles and the future risk of leading an impure life. This must surely fall into the science-consistency basket?
I was thinking about this:
“Given that [climate change] is an existential threat, we can’t be casual about the seriousness about the threat of climate misinformation,”
Well, what could be a greater threat to anybody than the possibility of spending eternity in Hell. So, on that basis, anything which denies the existence of God or the existence of Hell should be banned.
And the contrary to that is what Russell seems to be proposing. He seems to want Meta to ban anything which suggests that God exists and that miracles do happen.
And just when does ‘Meta’ get reclassified as a publisher? I mean given they are controlling the conversation by editing, banning and deleting only one side of a topic?
Also, when do the social media platforms get charged with aiding and abetting terrorism by letting clear calls for violence, bombings and recruitment into known terror organisation remain public?
And how about we STILL have paedo and porn posts and posters as evidenced by how many people keep getting arrested who built their contacts on social media?
Perhaps if the Big Tech controllers spent more time shaping algorithms to check for illegal activity and less on censoring normal people who simply have a different opinion to the communist agenda being preached BY Big Tech, social media would be a cleaner place to visit. Like, check for breaking actual real-world LAWS instead of making up new political rules to censor people.
That censorship removes them all from under S230 umbrella of protection and they should be charged for what they do in breaking the Constitution and for rank censorship in countries without the US Constitution.
Major news organizations will do everything in their power to get rid of FB. FB is taking “their” money.
Facebook is a private platform and may flag or take down any content it wishes. I don’t always agree with their choices, but I defend their right to make them. Use of Facebook is voluntary.
Your use of the street I pay for is now forbidden. Face book travels on a public/private network they do not own. Why should they be allowed to limit speech. Yes their server house that information but with and open connection Facebook has nothing.
Great in theory except when they have a monopoly on the dissemination of information in the English speaking world. That goes for Google, Amazon, and Apple too, who all shut down Parler, a paid social media site whose only sin was publishing ideas offensive to their sensibilities. The deplatforming of Parler by Amazon is grounds for a massive antitrust lawsuit. These companies should be broken up just like Bell Telephone in 1982, which stimulated competition and paved the way for the ubiquitous, inexpensive cell phone and internet service we enjoy today.
Facebook and Twitter advertised themselves as platforms ostensibly hosting the largest free exchange of ideas in the world where anyone can post whatever they want. Except they weren’t. Just like their devious business plan, it was really a bait and switch. Once they had enough customers to generate massive advertising revenue and profitability, they transformed into something else.
It’s time to remove the special protections afforded these companies disguising themselves as public forums while in reality censoring ideas and information they don’t like. It should start with massive fines for improper in-kind contributions to the Democrat Party in the 2020 election by censoring and deplatforming prominent Republican candidates, like the sitting President of the United States at the time. They are either a public forum or they are not, and because they deceptively billed themselves as a public forum but did not behave as one and did not afford their customers the same protections as the First Amendment does in actual public forums, they should be severely penalized, regulated, or their monopoly broken up.
Erm… sorry, but how can you have a monopoly on the dissemination of information… That goes for Google, Amazon, and Apple too. A monopoly is only of one, by definition.
Consistent with many comments on this thread, your point only applies in the strict literal or legal definition of “monopoly”. The Progressives have twisted the definition to mean any very large presence that controls a substantial part of the market. They went after Eastman Kodak and forced them to change their business model re film sales and processing – there were plenty other film companies, just none so big. IMO same as FB.
Even when Bell Telephone was a “monopoly” that federal regulators broke up, there were other phone companies in service ostensibly “competing” with Bell. But they were fleas on the back of the elephant.
That help?
“Great in theory except when they have a monopoly on the dissemination of information in the English speaking world. That goes for Google, Amazon, and Apple too, who all shut down Parler, a paid social media site whose only sin was publishing ideas offensive to their sensibilities.”
Google is now de-monetizing the conservative website “Worldnet Daily” (wnd.com).
It’s blatant censorship.
It is not censorship at all.
Neither “demonetizing” nor “deplatforming” is censorship in any way, shape or form. Not even a little bit.
]]]
Antitrust must be destroyed.
Yes but it is a public forum, a public space or would you prefer it to be an echo chamber, an electronic ghetto!
its already the latter two anyway
Why are people marking Walter down for stating the truth ??
Facebook is a private platform owned by Suckerburg
Use of Facebook is voluntary
they have chosen a private policy … if you don’t like it, don’t use it.
You don’t have to smoke or eat fast food, but some people chose to & suffer the consequences.
But it’s hypocritical to demand freedom of speech / expression, yet deny Suckerburg the same rights … even if he is a shitbag !!!
I’ve never been comfortable with Fecesbook or Twater … so I dont use them.
Yes! Many people claim they want freedom but then fail to back up their words.
Wait.
You really use freedom of speech to defend the censorship of free speech on a massive scale?
And in this case a guy who spent 400 mio bucks to support a specific party.
You really think that there i no difference between a gu who runs a lemonade
stand and a global megabank?
50 % of you white western guys a completely insane with your crazy radical attitude ,no matter left or right .
No sanity or common sense left at all.
On the left they pretend to hate the rich while kissing their butts of celebrities and repeating everything they gett from billionaires MSM
on the right they spout freedom/democracy/republic while opening all gates and paving the way to oligarchic tyranny and being proud of it.
This is about balance and open flow of information and it absolutely does not matter wether the monopol is controlled by the state or a private person- the abuse of the monopol ( which should not exist in the first place) must be prevented at all costs.
Imbalanced guys like you are the pest of mankind.
I am conversant with every single word you wrote … but have no idea what you you are on about (or what substance you are on).
Good point. There are no public platforms online! There are plenty of public forums but they are all privately owned. This is an issue because there is now, no analogue of the public square or speakers corner; it is all commerce or government.
Walter is being marked down because Facebook is not a purely private organization. Because of the protections they receive from government, they are at best a private/public partnership.
Actually, it is. Like most businesses, it is regulated by government. But the government hasn’t taken it over — yet.
As a platform, they are immune (section 230 or Title 47 of the US Code)to liability for what those who post say. When they censor, they are no longer a platform, but a publisher and should NOT then be immune for prosecution for libel, THEN they have the right to censor, but also should have exposure to lawsuits for what they allow to be published
The problem is that Facebook is immune from prosecution for misconduct due to Section 230, which essentially classifies it as a “common carrier”, meaning it’s not liable for content published on the platform – BUT, it exercises editorial control over that content regardless.
Remove Section 230 protections and make it liable, as any other non-social-media company would be. Then you have an argument.
That is not true.
You’re correct, however, if Farcebook decides to take down posts on subjects they disagree with then they are exercising publisher control and should be treated in exactly the same way as any publisher i.e. they are responsible for anything published on their site
I would agree with you except for the fact that Facebook is protected by a number of laws. Which completely refutes the belief that they are purely a private organization.
These “private” platforms get numerous privileges from the government in return for incorporating under government rules. Shareholders are exempt from personal legal liability. The financial markets through which they raise capital are (admittedly imperfectly) regulated to give confidence to investors. Our monetary system inflates the monetary base to ensure adequate capital and bails out these the banks essential for liquidity when they get in over their heads. Their patents, copyrights and trade names are vigorously protected.
This is one libertarian position I no longer buy.
“Do our policies combatting the spread of misinformation on Facebook apply to climate denialism?”
The term “Climate Denialism” is itself disinformation.
It is for a simple reason.
Climate denialism does not exist.
There isn’t even a single person on this planet that denies the existence of climate.
Indeed. And I’ve also never met a person that believes climate never changes. Most of the people that coin the phrase “climate change denial” have probably never taken the time to stop and parse their own words and what they are actually claiming. It’s an abuse of the English language, rather like the “existential threat” discussed upthread.
suddenly a robot voice intruded, explaining a comment you just made conflicted with a fact check?
If there were any justice in this world, that robot and its ‘fact check’ would have no more moral standing than the comment you had just made. As with ‘misinformation’ in the world of social media, their ‘fact checks’ are no less subjective than any human expression of an idea – and they’re both cynical shields for the arbitrary veto power of the media company over the expression of opinions they dislike.
Worse, Zuckerberg and most all the bazillionaire nobility at the heads of those media entities have in their education been exposed to the scientific method, and it appears that their personal ‘fact checkers’ have carefully buried an essential part of it: that any hypothesis must stand perpetually to be verified, and is not to be believed a law of God simply because it has succeeded in some few, or some large number of cases. It must yield as soon as someone confronts it with better evidence.
These ‘fact checks’ appear to be no more than a shield against better evidence, which they want perpetually banished.
The term fact checker is just another word for ministry of truth.
The only difference is that the monopol of the ministry of truth is now sold to the people as duopol
where the one half of the ministry pushes an agenda/censorship while the other half protects the agenda and censorship while claiming there is no agenda/censorship.
It is a little bit like those movie jokes where a person stands in front of a counter and is told by the bureaucrat that this is the wrong counter and told to go to the adjacent counter that is 1 yard away and as soon the person gets there it turns out it’s the same bureaucrat who moved from one chair to another.
Is this the same nitwit John Cook who knocked about with Stephen Lewandowski and liked to dress up in Nazi SS gear?
Or another nitwit John Cook?
Same Nitwit
Picture?
JF
Read all about it here
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/02/24/the-merchants-of-smear/
The other member of that trio is Dana Nuccitelli, co-author of Cook’s thoroughly falsified 97.1% “consensus” paper and currently a particularly noxious, Guardian “climate” propaganda writer.
The very same plonker.
As much as I consider Facebook and its ilk to be the digital equivalent of open streams of raw sewage running through a garbage dump, the fact remains that many people are going to use it. Therefore, what needs to be done is to clarify Section 230 so that it’s crystal clear that it does not apply to any company that censors legal content posted by its users.
Basically, if they want to censor, that’s fine – they can be subject to liability for everything posted on their site, including illegal activity such as child porn, IP theft, defamation, etc. But they have a way out of that: don’t censor anything legal. Congress needs to get this done as a top priority as soon as possible.
And if you read up on Zuckerberg and his corruption of the 2020 election, that will really get you going. Educate yourself on that as it’s a huge threat to our country and way of life: https://thefederalist.com/2021/10/14/zuckerbucks-101-how-a-media-mogul-took-over-the-2020-election-and-why-gop-leaders-must-never-let-it-happen-again/
BigTech must die.
All monopoles,duopoles ,Oligarchopols must die.
Everything too big will eventually become a weapon of a few to abuse the many,
wether it is a government,a corporation,an oligarchy,a foundation etc etc is of no relevance .
Your argument is spot on but has a flaw.
As soon as they make “denial ” illegal(by some hatespeech trick or executive order etc)they can again censor.
There are some among us who like to say that FaceBook is a private company and can ban whatever it likes, or words to that effect.
The phrase you are looking for here is ‘Cake and Eat It Too’.
FaceBook is claiming that you can’t blame them for what people publish, but also that they have the right to control what is published.
This is the problem. You cannot be both an impartial hosting service who only provides the platform for discussion (in the same way a street can’t be blamed for the actions of the protestors who march down it) and also very strictly control what content is displayed on the same platform (which is admitting you DO have a stake in what is being published under your name)
Cake.
Eat.
Even worse the do not own the pipe that the servers are hooked to without the pipe Facebook has nothing.
Nothing that has a monopole(which must not exist in the first place)
should be allowed to abuse the monopole.
No matter what the monopol is,the monopolist must not be allowed to manipulate the prize and it does not matter wether the product is hardware,software or information
One can not cry for freedom while paving the way for the tyrants by claiming,
Marxist tyranny by billionaires is evil
but i am perfectly fine with it as long as the tyranny is sold to me as capitalistic.
“Are these topics really offensive in the sense that child pornography is offensive?”
No they are not offensive and those topics are completely legal and legitimate topics as opposed to the illegal offensive child porn comparison. I suspect Facebook’s bias is so bad, they cannot even tell the difference.
Leftists have hyper sensitive sensibilities.
Even the tiniest amount of disagreement is enough to send them into fits of rage.
Leftists believe that they have a right to live in world where nobody disagrees with them, and they are willing to kill in order to make that right a reality.
Anything representing, reporting, or conveying the truth is always highly ‘offensive’ to Facebook or Meta.
This is Nazzism at its worst
a company believes it has the right to control your thoughts and eliminate any that are not aligned with its view
obviously they had failed to transform the companies bad image changing name from Facebook to meta
oh well bad luck
Strategy has been proposed before.
Right on point, Gringojay.
Do you have a reference for that clip?
Sorry, but no – it’s an on-line meme. I have not read the man’s writings and can not personally verify where the quote would be found on a printed page.
Youtube already editorializes everyone of my videos. They add a box pushing climate change is caused by humans, changing every few weeks, and linking to wikipedia before and now to the UN
I noted that this evening, and BigTech must die. Pressure must be applied to our congressional representatives to break up the monopolies that enforce the GroupThink.
Note that there are no “Big Tech monopolies,” and the government most certainly should not break up any companies. Congress should keep its hands off.
___
Antitrust must be destroyed.
Jim, no doubt you and Anthony are high on the Left’s list to send to re-education camps.
J S Mill (On Liberty) saw the suppression speech as evil (the ‘opinion’ silenced is that of skeptics):
In other words by depriving climate worriers of the skeptics’ point of view they can never be sure their untested convictions are truly warranted.
Facebook should cancel itself, everything about it is offensive
If you find Facebook offensive, don’t go there!
Facebook needs to be shut down.
No, it doesn’t. Just ignore it if you don’t like it.
USians might look at the remit and actions of the UK’s Behavioural Insights Team. It’s nickname is ‘The Nudge Unit’ and its purpose is to influence public opinion and responses.
It has offices round the world which sounds sinister. Would it be a legal organisation in the USA if one of those offices is on American soil?
JF
I do not know understand why they have not been sued. 230 exempts them from responsibility for the statement of a post on their site, but 230 does not protect them from suits regarding their own statements. When they wrongfully label a post as “misinformation” that is still libel. And if they have a written policy of libel the case is even more clear.
Some conservative attorney needs to get a spine, be a David and slay this Goliath.
P.S. It is time they were treated as a common carrier like the old phone companies. They would have to allow everything that was not clearly, demonstrably a crime.
Indeed. Spot on.
Scientific presentations on YouTube (OK, one that I viewed this evening) are amended with an editorial note defining Climate Change, and specifically stating that Climate Change is principally a result of human activities. We have got to bring pressure on Congress to break up the BigTech monopolies.
I hear alot about what happening. My question is, what should and can we do about it
As Lee Camp over at RT hilariously showed – the only way to deal with Facebook – Meta , is to declare it a nation itself. After all it has it’s own currency, the Diem, and a few billion netizens, and a GDP of the largest economies. It’s President is already a billionaire. Give Meta a seat at the UN, and the Charter applies!
Problem solved!
Oh wait – then Guterres will declare a climate emergency at Meta – land, and Marc Carney might use the Diem as the Global Single Digital Currency….. Come to think of it that’s looks like what is going on….
h/t Dr. Willie Soon
Hmmm… who’s ‘Oor Wullie’ working for these days?
Your back? Phew, I thought Simon was the only troll left.
No, I think that was its front.
For those who don’t get the reference, probably the majority of the English speaking world.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oor_Wullie
Although Wullie’s hometown was unnamed in the original Watkins strips, it has been called Auchenshoogle since the late 1990s.
Wullie and his friends roam the streets of his town, though he is sometimes depicted at school which he finds confining. Praise from his teacher, who addresses him as “William”, is rare and acutely embarrassing. His adventures often consist of unrealistic get rich quick schemes that lead to mischief, to the despair of his parents Ma and Pa (Wullie’s Pa is called “Tam”; the only reference to this is in a strip from the sixties during a conversation between Pa and PC Murdoch) and local policeman (and Wullie’s arch-nemesis) P.C. Murdoch.
Wullie’s gang consists of himself, Fat Bob, Wee Eck, Soapy Soutar and Primrose Paterson. Wullie is the self-proclaimed leader, a position which is frequently disputed by the others. In early strips the gang met in a wooden shed – usually located in the garden at Wullie’s house. He also owns a pet mouse named Jeemy.
Dr Willie Soon is famous public intellectual while you are a gutless and uncredentialed sock puppet. You have no status, whoever you are. While I am a real person with actual accomplishments and my contact details are a matter of public record. You on the other hand are a nobody. If I ran this site, I would not allow anonymous comment because it demeans the standard of dialogue.
As someone who has lost jobs over my political beliefs, if anonymous posting were not allowed, I could not afford to be here.
That fear has become even more justified the last few years as the woke seek to silence even the slightest amount of disagreement.
MarkW, perhaps I would make an exception if your “reality” was fully disclosed to me as site owner. But in the end anonymity is poison for the real world because it is completely unaccountable and stake less.
Lacking “skin in the game” it allows for bad actors, provocateurs, activists and paid trolls.
Ultimately it is gutless because you don’t put your money where your mouth is. You have my full sympathy and I do hear you. Your comments are particularly prolific and though I’m mostly in agreement with them, I find myself wondering if you are a paid to do it.
No, at some point you must make a stand for the real and come out of the shadows because it is clear right now that the reality of the whole world is being completely devalued by the hypocrisy of avatars and thoroughly gaslighted by apparatchiks that are enabled entirely by anonymity!
Not just an offensive troll, but a racist offensive troll.
Who are you working for, griffter?