I have not been posting much up to my blog lately. This has mostly been to the funk I have been in over the last few months. Also I have gotten feedback from many that they refuse to click out the walled gardens of most social media platforms which lead me to feeling like this was a waste of time.
Over the last few months we have see Facebook change their Community Standards Policy: Link to Queerty article
Tumblr is banning adult content: Link to The Verge article
We have lost Craigslist and the personal section: Link to a Washington Post article
The effects on free speech due to FOSTA/SESTA are real. I guarantee you that your federal representative and senators voted for it – there was very little opposition to it. This added fuel to this fire and now years later we are seeing it ignite. Let’s not delude ourselves as a community – we are caught up in it and many people you know have been fighting the effects of this law.
What we need to do is get ourselves distributed again. Not let our community in the had one of a few mega corporations like Facebook and Verizon have the stranglehold on how we communicate. All they need to do to erase us is change their moderation policy – and with the broad strokes Section 230 gives them, I am afraid we have very little to fight back on.
Paying for hosting isn’t that expensive. It costs me less than a night out drinking to operate my sites for the year. If you have the balls to tell me this is too expensive, and you are holding a top-shelf cocktail in your hand at a SF bar I will be calling out your bullshit.
If you say it is too inconvenient to click a link to a friend’s externally hosted site – I will call your bullshit. This is the complacency that is about to get many communities silenced.
At the same time be weary about where you jump ship to. The world is not safe – know who you are giving this sensitive content to. We are entering a time where the US seems to be getting more socially uptight again and people will use it against you.
Over the next month I am going to spend some time getting both my SFW and NSFW (this) site updated and make this my primary social media outlet.