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There's a worldwide convo going on again lately about shadowbanning. A lot of people don't realize this isn't new. They're getting so good at it that we're allowed to use it ourselves now. We can unfollow without unfriending, we can mute without a notification going out about it. We can keep our followers without losing them even though we don't want to see what they say. So we ourselves also shadowban our own friends and families.
So we get to use medias created and hosted by corporations that allow us to use their services for free. If it involves communication, we get some level of free use with certain agreements. We are allowed to communicate with one another. No one questions this, in fact, many think it's their right to use this free service. We have been lead to believe we have the right to use communication services free of charge.
Everything from there is a matter of definition, and pretty much a joke. We hand our words and thoughts over to free hosting services and expect them to 'play fair' and 'be legal' and whatever. Then when those free services start making our usage a little more difficult, we protest. We have to right to use others' properties in the way we see fit. Right?
Someone is making money on you wanting to communicate with their 'free' communication service. How they make that money gets hotly debated over all around the world. How we keep allowing them to use us as part of their branding products to make that money blows my mind. But it's what we've got, and yes, I use devices and platforms myself.
So we're on the brink of the types of communication we're allowed to have being redefined, and a lot of how they'll control it is through shadowbanning. Is that unfair?
I'm not arguing for companies to be able to abuse customers who don't yet realize they are literally part of the product. I'm not saying we should be ok with communication being cut off behind our backs without our knowing it. I'm especially not saying it's ok for our communication to be hacked and monitored, but when all boils down, I'm glad they can be legally ordered to share that in, say, missing persons cases and stuff. Which pretty much means they legally do have to monitor...
I shared a post yesterday about U.S. citizens being able to legally mail children through the postal service for a short time in our past. Can you imagine? But, think about it, snail mail is currently the only private communication you can have with anyone across a distance. Well, I don't know about around the entire world, but you know what I mean. The world just doesn't have the man power to open every envelope, you know? Yet they can easily monitor every word you say on a phone nowadays.
Perhaps it's time to relearn the finer arts of snailing our thoughts around again. Maybe it's time to get back to actually paying for our own communication with a book of stamps. All this free stuff is corrupting us, blinding us to what we believe is our right when we're all being herded into communication corrals and locked up with shadowbanning.
I guess a lot of you don't even remember not having email. You can't imagine living without instant communication. You don't know that it's possible to get the most important things said so privately that no one ever knows but you. Imagine having a machine to type on and there being no record of anything you ever type to come back and bite you. No hard drive, no other owner, no big brother.
Pencils and paper are important. If you are ever stuck in a blackout, on a stalled highway, or somewhere else with tech fail going down all around you, YOU CAN STILL COMMUNICATE. I fondly think of it as someone reading my mind through time.
Spiral notebooks are like security blankets. When all else fails, keep a notebook with you in the car, in your purse or a bag, just keep one around everywhere you go, and you will always be able to communicate. Why am I saying this? Well, I can imagine a scenario where all our phones go dead, where the grid goes down, where we literally cannot access social medias to see what is going on, cannot get a call through to anyone about what is going on, and what we'll be left with is writing down what is going on.
Don't be a slave and think you are helpless when it all goes down. Be ready to own your future. And I'll tell you right now I'm not going to harass you one bit about grammar and spelling and penmanship as long as you can get ideas across. The most important idea in the world could be written in pictographs, and I would be fine with that. Throw in a few maps and depictions of what's going on, write out what's happening, share your feelings, make paper airplanes, be human.
And if nothing bad ever happens, think about keeping some paper and pencils around anyway. They practically keep forever.
