#151 - Free Speech Liberation & Censorship By Proxy

Hi there, kids. Welcome to another episode of Escape and Cave.

It is the Tonzilla X-Pod. I'm your friendly, cordial, and absent host. Hot high. How is ya? It's episode number 151. Record date, early morning hours of January the 24th of 2024. I know, last time I was here, I said look for an episode the next couple days. That was a little over a month ago. Sorry. You know what I think what I should do?

This is a save time on this crap. Just record like an automatic disclaimer for when I take a few weeks off and I don't follow through on what I say I'm going to do with these episodes. Oh, I'll have another one for you in another day or two. You just have something ready to go. You just upload it. You know what I mean? Throw it in there. Sorry. I don't know what happened. I do. It was Christmas. I didn't get it out in a prompt and timely manner. And I just wanted to enjoy the holidays.

Christmas, New Year's, all that good stuff. Had a great one. Hope you did too. And then New Year's hit. And I got sick. I was sick for a couple weeks. That was fun. I didn't realize that shingles knocked you on your butt. Didn't mean. I felt like ass. And then, I mean, the last couple of weeks, it's like, oh my God. It's just a nonstop flood and flurry of stuff happening in the news. It's like you figure you're going to come up and do something. And all of a sudden there's this stream.

The dam breaks again. It's about each and every day. Now, finally, I've got one, two, three, four, five, six little note cards sitting here in front. There's no way that I can possibly cover everything that's happened in the last month and, what, four days in one episode and keep it under six hours. I'm not even going to try. I'm going to take the big pieces, the big chunks, and go from there, and hopefully I'll be able to Should I even say it?

I'll be a little more consistent with my releasing of my episodes. Let's start with the Lions real quick. This is going to be the last football-related—I shouldn't say that. I think this is going to be the last football-related piece that I'm going to do. Lions got knocked out by the Washington Redskins. I know, you call them the commanders, but to me, they're still the Redskins.

If you notice, if you're watching the video, if you look right up there, Got two Cleveland Indians hats And usually right in the middle of that Is a Washington Redskins hat, It's been up there for a long time Got it because, you know, the name change The Woke Flakes Brown Beat These organizations are changing their names Indians, Redskins are gone So I wanted to get some garb, some gear, Some paraphernalia And I got my wallet from these teams I got so pissed off

I took it down I don't want to look at it. I was just, Michigan's probably clinically depressed still. Both coordinators gone. Ben Johnson went to the Chicago Bears. Aaron Glenn, congratulations to him. He's going virtually home. Played for the Jets forever. And he's going to be their head coach. So, who are you rooting for in the NFC? I know you're not rooting for the Kansas City Chiefs. Nobody outside of Kansas City. And as far as I know, I've never heard from anybody in Kansas City.

I'm pretty sure you're probably rooting for the Bills this weekend. You should be. I am. NFC, Eagles, Redskins, who you want. Washington, Philadelphia. Jayden Daniels is a hell of a quarterback. It's hard for me to root for that team. God, he's good. Philadelphia's just, ew. I like the Phillies. But something about that Eagles team just, ugh. So, I don't know. No, I did not watch the national championship game in football. It's kind of the same way.

Who are you going to root for? Ohio State or Notre Dame? I'm not too far from South Bend. I should be a fan of the Fighting Irish. I should be rooting for the Fighting Irish, especially against the Buckeyes. I don't care. I don't know of anybody that does. It was, I think, the lowest rated football game, national championship game in forever. And it happened. The day of the inauguration. It's not like there's anything else to watch, you know?

Why didn't they postpone it? Put it back a week, a couple days, something. I don't know that it would have helped too much with the ratings because it's Ohio State. It's Notre Dame. Anyway, that's been our world. We've got a new cat. He's cute. Little boy, little black guy. Black kitten, not a black guy. That's kind of cool. I've got three now. Trying to think if there's anything else to update you on. Not really.

But it's not like we don't have enough to talk about, huh? Music. Wee! All right, I'm going to start off by talking about a couple of other things. Other than Donald Trump, other than the inauguration, other than everything that's happened here in the course of the last four days. I'll get to that here in a couple of minutes, but there's a lot of other stuff, a lot of other things that happened over the last month.

The first thing I want to talk about is the New Orleans shooting that happened New Year's Eve. You remember that? Do you remember? It was all over. It was the big story for a couple of weeks until it seems like there's always something to knock these huge stories back into the background. And this was interesting. I had like two or three, four in the morning. Everybody knows what happened.

No need to rehash that. But the one thing that I wanted to mention, the usual suspects, the Hamas caucus, the ones who were rooting on, cheering for and supporting all of the anti-Israel, anti or pro-Hamas protesters on the college campuses, all of them are silent on this. I haven't heard one of these squad members, AOC, Tlaib, Jayapal, the rest of them, Cori Bush. I don't think I heard anybody condemn that act in New Orleans. They just went silent. I look for it for a few days. AOC, same thing.

I check their ex-feeds just about every day for a week or two, waiting to see if Democratic socialists, these anti-American, these enemies within, if you will, you just did, could bring themselves to condemn an ISIS attack in New Orleans. They're condemning everything else. They're all, you know, it's not like they've gone into radio silence in the last few weeks. AOC's verklempt over Elon Musk and his.

Epileptic seizure of public display last weekend she's all about that she's condemning the shit out of elon musk and it's a nazi salute but she can't bring herself to condemn an isis attack in new orleans, i thought the silence coming from that crowd was deafening, As far as I know, I have heard nobody hold any of these squad members, these far leftists, to account for their lack of condemnation for what happened on New Year's Eve in New Orleans.

Another big story, Mark Zuckerberg came out of nowhere and announced that Facebook was going to rededicate itself to its foundational principle of free speech and expression. Went on the Joe Rogan podcast and was telling Joe how the government was pressuring Facebook to censor certain information, especially surrounding the COVID virus, the lab leak, anything that would suggest that the COVID vaccine had any side effects.

Of course, it did. It was truthful information. And Mark Zuckerberg would like you to believe that that just offended him to no end. And that he's finally seen the light and he's decided heroically, to loosen the censorship chains on his platform and release, liberate all of us to finally freely express ourselves once again. Would he like you to believe that he is a champion? He's a hero. He is a liberator.

Now you may be able to tell by the tone of my voice that i don't necessarily agree with that now you just heard me knock over a canned drink i'm gonna do this in front of you let's see what happens see if my celsius explodes and it's going to if i'm not careful you're ready. My days of heavy drinking have served me well. Anyway, where was I? Yeah, you may be able to tell by the tone of my voice that I am a little cynical of the Zuckerbeast.

I'm glad he did what he did. Personally, I've noticed a complete change. I'll get to that in a minute. But what I think he's doing, he's a capitalist. This guy wants to make money. He wants his platform to be successful, to continue to generate money, wants it to, you know, be relevant as long as he can. A lot of basically older people like me that are still using this thing.

And it's a great way to get his platform back in the spotlight, talking about it, people talking about it, getting his face out there, reminding people that his platform is still there. I think what he did was I think he took his finger, licked it, stuck it up into the wind. Which way does it go? Oh, my God. The backlash is here.

The woke, anti-woke backlash Has finally arrived The backdraft That I. Prophesized Would come eventually As far back as 2018 Looks seven fucking years But it got here well Mr. Zuckerberg With his finger in the air Finally decided He'd pay attention to it Donald Trump being sworn in This month and made his little trip down to Mar-a-Lago. And right after that, boy, he's out there. We're no longer going to suppress, you know, political content.

We're going to get rid of fact-checkers. Fact-checkers are too biased. Eureka, really, Mark. You're just now figuring this out. Boy, that's interesting timing. Taking off a lot of the guardrails as far as just speech in and of itself. It's okay now for you to call a woman a dishwasher. It's a big thing. Somebody actually wrote an article on this. It's now okay to call a woman a kitchen appliance. You can't call a woman a dishwasher. You couldn't for a long time. That would get you flagged.

Using non-preferred or un-preferred pronouns to describe a trans woman. A penised person. Misgendering that would get you. Well, not anymore. You can say they're mentally ill now. Obviously, they are. It didn't suddenly change. It didn't suddenly become a disorder. A gender identity disorder, as it was called for decades. The nature of the disorder hasn't changed. The attitude in the country, the liberating attitude in the country is what's changed.

That's what the country voted for. The backlash has arrived. The back draft has arrived. And it, my friends, is glorious to behold.

It's even better than I could have possibly hoped It would be, Well, Mark Zuckerberg noticed that Finger in the wind He's like, hey, This is a good time to change direction again Get my face out there Rebrand myself as the savior The liberator of free speech The champion against government circumvention Of the First Amendment Via these social media companies I am going to champion free speech once again. Rogan didn't completely buy it. Called him out on a couple things.

I don't remember exactly what they were. But willing to give him the benefit of the doubt, I suppose. Either way, I don't really care. Well, I do care. I do care how it happened. But primarily at this point in time, I'm just glad it did. It's about fucking time. Now, if the attitude changes again in another five or ten years, what's he going to do? Is he going to go back and, you know, take the fact checkers out of the mothballs? Who knows? He might.

But I'll tell you what. I'll tell you what happened with me personally. I've been languishing right around 150 followers on Facebook, on my page. I've talked about it on this show a number of times, going back years. Back into the late teens, about how useless that page was because I couldn't get any sort of reach. I was basically posting things into a void, into a vacuum.

I announced this a couple weeks ago, and lo and behold, finally, in the last couple of weeks, I have gained almost tripled my followers. Eureka! Is that a coincidence?

Now, it's pretty clear to me that everything I said about that platform. Suppressing speech It's been going on for a long time And it was going on long before COVID I can promise you that, But it's stark how just more open it feels on Facebook Feels a little bit more like X, And I am, to be honest with you, I've been a fan of X I went on there just about a year ago I decided to sign back up and go check it out, And it's like Internet 1.0 over there Remember?

Remember when you could say what you thought? I mean, it's really hard to get yourself in trouble I mean, you gotta be trying to get yourself knocked off an X Well, Facebook is gonna move back in that direction Chanel is a good for society, I don't know. I was raging against Facebook and the social media echo chamber called the social media disease back in 2018-2019. We were different then, though, and things have changed as far as social media goes.

I haven't noticed, even with the unshackling, the removal of the censorship guidelines or guardrails or whatever you want to call it, I still haven't seen a lot of the... You know, you remember the threads, the flame war threads where you had people who would just go into somebody's comment section, you'd post something, whatever it was, and then you'd just go back and forth and back and forth, sometimes for days, ripping each other apart.

Flame wars. You know, the Clantons and the McLowries on Facebook, right? Liberals and conservatives usually. I still don't see a lot of that.

Something's changed with that people have moved i don't know if it's reels i don't know if it's it's you know watching videos when they log on just maybe people have learned i have i don't engage people like that if i see something that just i find ridiculous or stupid or something that normally i don't know 10 years ago would have pissed me off i didn't just roll my eyes and move on i i think i've gotten to the point

where i just it's not worth the time and the ever because you know how this is going to end. And nothing's going to change. You're not going to change that person's mind. I got a feeling, I got a sense. I haven't done any sort of research on this. It's just me being, you know, me. But I have a feeling that I think most people have taken that attitude. They're just over it. I don't know.

But there is no doubt that in the last five years that platform particularly in social media in general for a long time has felt suffocating. I had a picture, a quote that I put up. I can't remember exactly what it was. It was just really vanilla. It wasn't anything, you know, controversial. You know, didn't offend anybody. No protected group. Got flagged and pulled because it was unattributable. Like the attribution at the bottom, I think it was Mark Twain.

They couldn't prove. They can't prove he said. It was really just bizarre. Now, this is the thing that they decided to pull. Really, it's felt suffocating for a long time. And finally, it's starting to feel a little bit better. One other thing on the social media stuff, one of the executive orders that Donald Trump signed this week, and there's been a lot of them, is that he's forbidding the federal government from getting in the business of censoring Americans.

And I assume, I haven't read it, but I assume that means through the electronic social media platforms and applications. Using these companies and pressure on these companies as a way to circumvent the First Amendment. That's exactly what that was. The government cannot censor your speech. That's in the First Amendment. We've all had those conversations about this for years. Well, a private company can do what it wants because it's not the government, right?

Well, if the government goes in and puts a fist or a hammer down on these social media companies to censor, then they're getting around the First Amendment, censoring by proxy. I think one of the executive orders that Trump signed this week got rid of that. One other thing on social media, TikTok. TikTok, TikTok went dark for a day. The TikTok ban went into effect. I think it was Sunday. No buyer. Went dark for a day. Oh, my God. TikTok, Stan freaked out. What am I gonna do?

A lot of people who have built their livelihoods Making a living on TikTok, Maybe that sounds odd Coming from a guy who's doing a podcast But. I'm sorry I feel very little Sympathy for these folks Maybe I should feel more Maybe I'm a bad person That's fine but I just don't. Anyway, a lot of people have a really hard time with this. The addiction, the scrolling addiction, the algorithm. Nobody can see the algorithm. It is one of the closest guarded secrets in China.

A lot of folks who've been just dependent upon that platform are having a really hard time for a day. In fact, I figured there was going to be some suicides. I thought We were going to see a bunch of stories about tick-tock suicides. At some point, well, Trump decided that he was going to stay the execution for 45 days. That was built into the law, I guess. And so he's going to give it 45 days, give them an opportunity to find a buyer.

He gave an entire screen. That's one of the great things about Trump this week. One of the biggest distinctions you can make is that he is in front of the press. He is asking questions and giving answers oh my god that's refreshing well that's one of the things he was talking about. Trying to find a buyer for that platform. And then something about giving the U.S. government. Getting half stake in it? I don't know. Anyway, 45 days. TikTok's got a stay of execution.

I have never signed up for TikTok. I have never been on the platform. Tuning my horn. Toot, toot. But I think, while it's not dark, can you still download that app?

I don't think so. Not sure, you can correct me if I'm wrong But I did see something Where, Phones With the application Installed on it Were being sold for thousands of dollars, Thousands of dollars On eBay Just to have a phone with the TikTok app I told the wife tonight We were talking about this I'm like, why the hell Didn't I think of that, I have an extra iPhone right there. Oh. I just, that's the entrepreneurial spirit I look. Thousands of dollars. I think like $3,000. Oh, it's with TikTok.

And so dependent people are on that app. Anyway, we'll see how this all plays out. It's not dead yet. But while it was dead for that 24 hours, something very, very interesting happened. I noticed this maybe more on X than I did on Facebook, but I did see it on Facebook as well.

A lot of pro-Chinese influencer types, like pro-Chinese Communist Party types, all of a sudden flooded into X, a little bit onto Facebook too, touting the bona fides of Chinese culture, Chinese society, what it's like, how great it is to live in communist China. Look at this beautiful city. It's the city of the future. And wouldn't it be nice to have rent controls? Oh my God, you'd be so happy if you only lived and Chinese communist utopia.

And it was coordinated. These things hit at the same time, and there were a lot of them while TikTok was down. And then the stay of execution came, and I haven't seen any of them, very few. I haven't noticed any in a couple of days now, but they were all over last weekend. I have just this inkling, remember this. they have something in place. They have a program, some sort of a propaganda machine in place ready to deploy.

These things were all tied together. Somehow they all showed up at the same time. I went to China and found out that the American government's been lying to me all this time. Oh, my God. China's so great. Look at this city. That kind of stuff. Just file this way. File this away in your pocket somewhere, back of your head. This is going to come back at some point. And one other thing about this that I've noticed, the transgender pages. This is on Facebook.

There are a handful of them and another couple of just far left activist pages, like far left, communist stuff, where you see the hammer and sickle. But these trans pages specifically have popped up since right around election time, maybe after Trump was elected, and they're posing as pro-trans pages. But about, I don't know if I can quantify this, but a lot of the posts are pro-communist. I'm not saying this hyperbolically either. They are actually pro-communist.

So they're sort of mixing this stuff in with the transgender crap. These are front pages for something. It reminds me of 2014. When I was talking about, on this podcast, go back to the very first one or two that I did, detecting the disinformation or whatever, that I recorded back in 2014, it reminds me, they're getting it. This stuff is all tied together. It's all connected. They're using the same lines, the same memes, different memes with the same verbiage.

The stuff's connected Detecting the disinformation They're getting it from somewhere, Anyway, file the stuff away Just remember this I'll try to do the same thing You may hear this again at some point But yeah, those aren't transgender pages They are, sure, They're throwing the slop into the trough, For the cattle to graze upon But they're also mixing it, infecting it Flavoring it Seasoning it With a little Marxism,

Literal communism With the hammer and sickle Celebrate queer communism I swear to God I saw it, Weird, huh? Music. Alright, boys A one A two A three A four Okay, on that note We're going to cut this one short. The rest of this podcast is already recorded, so I'm going to check it out. Tanzilla X over at YouTube and on the Substack. You can also check out the Facebook page, Escaping the Cave, and Tanzilla X Pod over there on X. Thanks for clicking in, and we'll talk to you soon. So long. Music.