I wasn’t planning to write another column today, until Mark Zuckerberg made his amazing about-face yesterday, admitting that content moderation on Facebook had “gone too far” and announcing that he’s going to “restore free expression” on the site.
First I pinched myself, to prove that I wasn’t dreaming. Then I checked the calendar, to confirm that it’s not April Fool’s Day. Then I re-read his statement, specifically the part where he says that he’s getting rid of his armies of blatantly biased “fact checkers.”
Then I went outside and crouched down low, scanning the skies above me to be sure that there were no flying pigs swooping low enough to collide with me.
But no. I wasn’t dreaming, it’s not April first, and there were no porcine aviators darkening the skies over our great country. A famous and influential censor has apparently seen the error of his ways, and is repenting.
I don’t know whether Zuckerberg has actually learned from experience and had a change of heart, or is only tactically retreating in the face of a free speech ascendancy that’s been energized since November 5th. (I’m generally cynical about lefties who gain a “newfound respect” for free speech.)
But the beautiful thing is that it doesn’t really matter. The end result is more free speech, and that’s a very good thing for our nation, and even better for conservatives. Because our ideas are better than leftist ones, and when both are allowed space in the public square, ours thrive and theirs wither.
This also comes at a particularly good time for me, because as regular readers may know, after an eight-year run on the CO site with no Facebook warnings, in the last month I’ve gotten two “offensive speech” warnings, and had two of my columns pulled from this site.
In addition, several of my columns were slapped with ridiculous FB critiques. For example, when I discussed the fact that “climate change” isn’t going to roast or freeze us all to death within the next 18 months, FB kindly put a text box at the bottom of the column – and on every response and comment! – saying something like, “To learn the truth about climate change, go to climatechangewillkillusall!.gov.”
But those joke-blockers were as ham-handed as any know-nothing Soviet apparatchiks, and I assume that anyone with an above-AOC-level IQ knows that such “corrections” are absurd.
And as far as the hate speech strikes and possible banning, the vaunted FB algorithms have proved no match for the brilliant subterfuge of my cunning plan to use… wait for it… pig Latin! (It’s like the way the US Army used Navajo code-talkers in WWII, only more juvenile.)
Thus, my comments on “ranny-tays” have flown under the radar. (And no, no matter how many times I’ve been tempted, I haven’t had to deploy the “o-gay uck-fay ourself-yay” yet. Because I’m a gentleman.)
Anyway, Zuck’s retreat is good news, and another green flag that things are turning around. He specifically said that he’s going to end the fact-checking “completely,” replacing it with a “Community Notes” model that Elon uses on Twitter/X.
Which is another win for me, because I expect that my columns will be getting a mountain of community notes, along the following lines: “This guy is always right!” And, “How does he do it?” and, “We should probably sell all that we have, give it to the poor, and follow him.”
So with the 20th only 12 days away, we may end up testing Trump’s prediction that we will get tired of winning, saying, “Please, please, it’s too much winning!”
Finally, since people seemed to enjoy yesterday’s throw-back excerpt from one of my columns from the dark days of January 2021 – new readers apparently weren’t aware that I can write the hell out of an inaugural poem, for example – I decided to close with another blast from the past.
By the way, if you haven’t checked out my WordPress site (Martinsimpsonwriting.com), you should give it a look. If you click “subscribe” there (it’s free), you’ll get an email letting you know when I’ve posted a new column. It also includes archives of my old stuff, which means you can go back and re-live the ecstasy of January 2017 or the agony of January ’21.
Many people say that the entire collection is an example of wisdom literature. Like the book of Proverbs, or the Analects of Confucious, or the Kama Sutra.
Well, not the Kama Sutra. If you’re getting THAT out of it, you are really reading it wrong!
Anyway, here’s another throwback excerpt from 1/12/21, when I was desperately seeking any silver lining in the dark cloud of the impending Biden administration:
“The Dems are such horrific politicians that they are going to over-reach and alienate all but their hard-core base, and to the extent that we can have even fair-ish congressional elections in the future, they should be sailing into a serious repudiation in the mid-terms, a la Obama’s 56-seat House bloodbath in 2010.
Biden has one orthopedic shoe in the grave, and Kamala is a human toothache, and all of the faces of the national Democrat party look like the Elephant Man’s family reunion, morally speaking. They are not going to wear well.
If they were even room-temperature smart, they could do much more damage by posing as unifiers and throwing a few, pitiful bones to the spineless GOP members who always seem happy for even the most meager of scraps. Instead, they are so driven by their own malice that they can’t help themselves: they’re going to double-down on their frothing hatreds, and pursue their “enemies” (i.e. half of the country). Anyone who is not a completely lost cause is going to be repelled by that.”
Okay, so I missed the optimistic mid-term projection. The only red wave we had was in Florida and (oddly enough) New York. But as for the rest of my predictions?
I think I can say, as Willie Brown said after he “interviewed” Que Mala for her first job in politics…
Nailed it!
12 days and counting, people…
Martin Simpson 