Censorship Archives - thegoodwills.com

All of a Twitter about social media

twitter-social-media — Chart of Twitter demographics courtesy of Genroe

If you have a Twitter account you may be a bit troubled by the disruption to the business model as the new owner, Elon Musk, flexes his considerable financial muscle. There are 5.8 million Twitter accounts in Australia, the eighth largest in the world. Still, of the 1.3 billion Twitter accounts worldwide, only 192 million are actively used. The stats were uncovered in an ABC discussion about how relevant Twitter is to people.

Twitter is a social networking service launched in March 2006. The San Francisco-based company hosts a microblogging site on which users post and interact with “tweets”. Tweets were originally restricted to 140 characters (one or two sentences). This was doubled to 280 characters in late 2017. The required brevity attracted writers, journalists, comedians and academics keen to demonstrate their skill in making a concise point. It also attracted minorities who otherwise had no voice.

As Twitter devotee Mr Shiraz said when I joined: ‘say something original, clever or witty.’ He added: “Be careful who you follow or they will make your life a misery!”

Over time Twitter became the ideal way to break news and all journalists found themselves inextricably tied to their ‘Twitter feed.’ Twitter also became the darling of propagandists (of the left and the right), the most obvious example being former US president Donald Trump. Posting under the handle, The Real Donald Trump, the US leader for a long while started conversations on policy with the public at large, bypassing the hierarchical chain of command.

In 2021, after the January 6 attacks on the Capitol building, Facebook banned Trump from posting and a day later Twitter issued a permanent ban, “due to the risk of further incitement of violence.”

The Conversation last week wrote about the latest developments at Twitter, which was bought by Elon Musk for $44 billion. Writers Daniel Angus and Timothy Graham said it was clear that Musk was “intent on taking Twitter in a direction “at odds with the prevailing cultures of its diverse users”.

Amid reports of Twitter users quitting the platform for alternatives like Mastadon and Hive Social, Musk began reinstating high-profile users – including Donald Trump and Kanye West. Both had been banned for repeated violations of community standards. Trump in the meantime set up his own social media site (Truth Social).

Elon Musk completed his $44 billion takeover of Twitter in late October, seven months after he first made a bid for the listed company. What quickly followed was a mass exodus of Twitter staff, including thousands that Musk fired via email. Those who remained were warned they would have to face hard working conditions. Not surprisingly, there is much angst about the future of the privatised Twitter.

Just this week Musk has removed the policy that stopped people posting Covid misinformation. Reasonable people everywhere said ‘why?’

Forbes magazine said many Twitter users are worried about degradation on both the technical and content moderation sides. This is a particular worry in light of Elon Musk allowing suspended accounts to rejoin, with fewer people left to police hateful content.

This week Musk complained about Apple removing its advertising from Twitter and accused Apple of threatening to ban the software from its App Store. Apple has said nothing public about this, although Musk now tells us the ban is off. It’s a good example of what we can now expect from Musk. He has taken the company private, which means he no longer has to make public disclosures, unless it is in his interest, that is.

Forbes reported on the sudden rush of support for a tech startup, Hive Social. In early November Hive announced it had reached a million users, broken through crowdfunding goals and was adding more than 100,000 users a day.

Writer Paul Stassi speculated that it was a matter of Twitter users opening a Hive Social account ‘just in case.”

Stassi points out that Hive Social is a new tech company run by just two people. While it appears to imitate Twitter to some extent, there are many things you can’t do on Hive that Twitter users take for granted.

Twitter’s enduring slogan is ‘don’t miss out – Twitter is the first to know what’s going on.’

A quick check on Saturday morning (the Victorian election), @PRGuy17 tweeted in Report from Mulgrave: “this is the first time I have ever felt unsafe while voting … they literally circled around me and blocked my path.” By 11.44am Victorian time, 1,995 people had ‘liked’ this and 399 retweeted the post, which meant it spread to the followers of more twitter accounts.

In the Twitterverse, other users comment and the original tweeter responds (or not). A conversation develops. If the interest is manifest, Twitter will declare that the topic is ‘trending’. That’s all fine and good and democratic unless you don’t want to be that up to date.

In short, a 74-year-old retired journalist has no real use for following a Twitter feed (all day and night as some people seem to do). I do post FOMM there every week but have no way of knowing which of my followers read it. The one exciting thing that happened to me on Twitter, a well-known Australian musician and songwriter tweeted: “@Bobwords48 is Bob Wilson, who wrote Underneath the Story Bridge. Who knew?”

Australians are in love with social media in general, but Twitter not so much. Marketing company Genroe says that as of February 2022, 21.45 million Australians were active users of social media (82.7% of the Australian population). That’s a 4.6% increase on 12 months before. Key statistics drawn from the research include

98% of Australian users access social media via a mobile device;
Australians spend an average of 1 hour 57 minutes per day on social media;
Australians have one of the lowest number of social media accounts per person in the world (7.2);
52% use Social Media as a source of news (the world average is 55%).
30.3% use Social Media when looking for information about a brand.

YouTube (78.2%) and Facebook (77.7%) are tied for the most popular social media platforms in Australia. A survey of people aged 13 and over declared Facebook (27.1%) as their most favoured social site platform. YouTube was excluded from this survey, which showed Instagram in second place (16.2%) followed by Messenger (9.0%), WhatsApp (6.1%), TikTok (6.0%), SnapChat (4.2%) and Twitter (2.8%). As for leaving the Twitter platform because you fear what kind of content may be permitted (or banned) under the new regime, here’s a few thoughts. There were many instances of fake news, fake accounts, flagged content, spam, harassment, trolling and mis-leading commentary under the old Twitter. Despite moderation, there is still a fair bit of aggro (Australian expression meaning aggression), defamatory comment and hate speak. I look at my semi-active Twitter account with its series of links to our website and think ‘what’s the worst that could happen?In terms of relevancy to “our” demographic, the over-50s comprise only 17.1% of Twitter accounts worldwide. As for @PRGuy17, by 3.39 on Saturday afternoon his 9.08am tweet about intimidation at a Victoria polling booth had been liked by 3,023 users and retweeted (shared) 580 times. As is the Twitter way, the story made its way into mainstream news bulletins. This one tiny example plucked from the Twitterverse is a good example of how free speech and democracy works. I can’t see regular Twitter users (of the left or the right) giving away the opportunity to engage in unfettered public discourse about things that matter.

@bobwords48

*Today is the 50^th anniversary of the Whitlam government’s historic election win. In case you missed my musical take on this era: https://thegoodwills.bandcamp.com/track/when-whitlam-took-his-turn-at-the-wheel

Down the rabbit hole, looking for trouble

The phrase ‘going down the rabbit hole’ could well apply to my activities earlier this week, as I set out to research ‘alternative’ social media networks including those adopted by the right wing.

Before I disappeared down the burrow, I had some idea what I would encounter, having last year researched 4Chan and 8Chan.

My research was thwarted right at the start by Amazon’s reported move to ban Parler from its web-hosting network.

Apple and Google have also removed the Parler App from its app stores. Not surprisingly, www.parler.com has been off-line since Monday.

Parler (pronounced par-lay), at last count had 15 million members, including a significant number of Trump supporters. Parler has been cited as the source of posts inciting violence before last week’s storming of Washington’s Capitol Building. Amazon terminated the app’s internet access at the weekend, having previously warned the social media operator about breaching its moderation rules (deciding which comments to let through).

While Parler went off-line, looking for another web host, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg took to his own forum to explain why Trump has been denied access. Twitter had already blocked Mr Trump’s account after earlier labelling some of his tweets as disputed or false claims.

Amazon (and Parler) have not made official comments about the ban, not surprising given the potential for litigation. This piece by the Washington Post (owned, as the article declares, by Amazon owner Jeff Bezos), should suffice as a summary.

The fallout from last week’s rioting at the Capitol Building includes internet giants Facebook and Twitter banning soon to be ex-President Trump from commenting. This could be construed to mean they figure the riots happened because Trump encouraged it (and social media gave the angry mob a place to vent, plan, organise and schedule).

Authorities seemed slow to lay arrest and lay charges, (the FBI today says more than 100 arrested). Those charged include those accused of bringing bombs and weapons into the building. Others, whose faces were caught on video, have so far escaped the link between that and their actual identities. If it had been in CCTV-dominated London, they’d all be nicked by now.

On Tuesday, US authorities announced new arrests and charges including Jacob Anthony Chansley, also known as Jake Angeli. They also charged Derrick Evans, a recently-elected member of the West Virginia House of Delegates. The US Attorney’s office said Mr Evans was identified on a video, shouting as he crossed the threshold into the Capitol, “We’re in, we’re in! Derrick Evans is in the Capitol!”

The pair and one other man were charged in Federal Court in connection with the violent incursion into the Capitol.

Chansley, the most identifiable of those captured on video or security cameras was hard to miss, with his red white and blue face paint, tattooed chest, horned helmet and bearskin toupee.

He was charged with “knowingly entering or remaining in any restricted building or grounds without lawful authority, and with violent entry and disorderly conduct on Capitol grounds.”

On Tuesday I clicked ‘like’ on multiple Facebook posts condemning Australia’s acting Prime Minister Michael McCormack for seemingly taking ex-president Trump’s side over the Twitter ban. The debate, free speech vs consequences. rumbles on.

McCormack’s attempts to compare the riots with last year’s Black Lives Matter protests against racial injustice were described by Amnesty International as “deeply offensive”.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison, who is on leave, last week condemned the rioters over the “terribly distressing” violence and called for a peaceful transfer of power.

But unlike many other world leaders, he refused to acknowledge Trump’s role in inciting the mob that gate-crashed the US Capitol building.

Just in case you think things like that only happen ‘over there’, there are stridently right-wing politicians in our own parliament saying provocative things. The Guardian reported that government backbencher George Christensen said over the weekend he would push for laws to “stop media platforms from censoring any and all lawful content created by their users”.

Further to Parler’s ban, social media posts have appeared claiming that ‘ultra left-wing radicals’ have downloaded Parler profiles aplenty and a mass ‘doxxing’ is feared.

Doxxing in this context means a deliberate dumping of publicly available data with the aim of ‘outing’ people who express strong views on social media. Apparently it (the gleaning), has been going on for some time.

At this point, like my friend Mr Shiraz, who finished his daily rant on Facebook and went outside to prune trees, I turned my mind to substantive issues in Australia.

It seems the combined media coverage of Covid-19 and life in Trumpistan* has pushed Australia’s refugee issues off the news agenda.

Since I recently joined a local refugee support group which aims to help refugees in a positive way, I thought I should play my part.

I started by writing to the Southern Downs Regional Council, asking Mayor Vic Pennisi to join the 168 local governments in Australia who have designated their regions a ‘Refugee Welcome Zone.’

Our near neighbour, Toowoomba Regional Council, declared the city as such back in 2013 – before it was even a ‘thing’.

The Refugee Council of Australia definition of a ‘Refugee Welcome Zone’ is: ‘a Local Government Area which has made a commitment in spirit to welcoming refugees into the community. The aim is to uphold the human rights of refugees, demonstrate compassion for refugees and enhance cultural and religious diversity in the community’.

There’s a bit of a precedent, with participants widespread throughout Australia including the City of Sydney (NSW), Brisbane City Council (Qld), the City of Subiaco (WA), Clarence City Council (Tasmania) and Port Macquarie-Hastings Council (NSW).

There are eight local governments in Queensland who have rolled out the welcome mat for refugees, including Brisbane, Gold Coast, Logan, Townsville, Toowoomba and Noosa Council.

In applying myself to letter writing, I broke the cycle of ‘doom-scrolling’ which is a catch-phrase to describe the act of constantly updating news and social media feeds on one’s mobile phone. They say it makes anxious people grind their teeth at night.

This insidious condition worsens for every day the US inauguration grows closer; for every day we endure live press conferences updating our region’s Covid status.

In what must surely now be recognised as a classic FOMM digression, the phrase ‘Down the Rabbit Hole’ has been nabbed by an enterprising South Australian winemaker.

Down the Rabbit Hole Wines is clever marketing in an industry that seems switched on to it. I should also tell you about a Victorian winemaker whose label is Goodwill Wine. I don’t imbibe, but She Who Does tells me the red is worthy of their loose adaptation of our band name (www.thegoodwills,com).

Brand names aside, ‘going down the rabbit hole’ is defined by dictionary.com as a metaphor for something that transports someone into a wonderfully (or troublingly), surreal state or situation.

I rest my case.

Last week: One of my readers (a beekeeper) chided me for calling the bee disease ‘Fowlbrood’. I’m blaming the spellchecker, as I already knew it was ‘American foulbrood’ or AFB.

*Trumpistan: a term for the parts of the USA which support Donald Trump

Censorship, guns and the right to arm bears

guns-bears-censorship — This image is classified (S) for satire under FOMM’s censorship guidelines

I was idly wondering if I should have a go at George Christensen for pulling that silly, anti-greenies gun stunt at the firing range but self censorship kicked in. What if he knows where I live? I blanched. The process known in journalism school as ‘self censorship by osmosis’ still kicks in, even 18 years down the track.

You may have assumed I was about to jump into the very deep pool of acrimonious discourse about mass shootings, guns and gun control. Actually, no, there are enough rabid views out there from one side and the other. Perhaps you will have seen Greens Senator Sarah Hanson-Young’s repost of the kind of vile trolling one can attract by advocating for the environment (if not, don’t bother looking it up – Ed.)

Instead, I thought we should look at a worrisome instance of censorship; where a respected economic analyst/journalist had an article taken down by the national broadcaster, the ABC. Emma Alberice’s reasoned piece about corporate tax cuts was removed by ABC management, reportedly after complaints from on high about its alleged lack of impartiality. Alberice’s article argues there is no case for a corporate tax cut when one in five of Australia’s top companies don’t pay any tax.

After public criticism, the ABC deflected cries of ‘censorship’ saying removing the analysis and an accompanying news story were ‘entirely due to concerns about Ms Alberici’s compliance with ABC editorial policies that differentiate analysis from opinion’.

The analysis has since been scrutinised by experts and given the seal of approval. It has even been re-posted at a public affairs website owned by the eminent Australian, John Menadue, AO. You may recall Menadue. He started his working life as private secretary to Gough Whitlam (1960-67), before forging a career in the private sector then returning to public service in the mid-1970s. He has since led a distinguished career in both public and private life, most notably as an Australian diplomat.

Mr Denmore, one of Australia’s more incisive commentators on media and economics, wrote this in Alberici’s defence:

Mr Denmore (the pseuydonym of a former finance journalist), sees this issue as plain old-fashioned censorship.

He concludes that Alberice was merely offering insights, which have got the nod from some serious-headed economists, as ‘uncomfortable truths’, which those in high government office and boardrooms found too confronting.

Now, a week later, the ABC has reinstated* Emma Alberici’s analysis, albeit with some passages removed. As former ABC journalist Quentin Dempster reported in The New Daily, the author and her lawyers negotiated an agreed form of words for the reposted analysis.

The removal of Alberici’s original analysis coincided with a planned US visit by a high-level delegation of Australian business and government leaders. The latest advocate of global of ‘trickle-down economics’,+ President Donald Trump, will meet with PM Malcolm Turnbull today. No doubt Mal will be taking notes on the US president’s ‘open for business’ approach of slashing corporate tax rates from 35% to 21%. Australia’s more modest proposal, which is currently blocked in the Senate, is to reduce the corporate tax rate from 30% to 25%, over a decade.

+A term attributed to American comedian Will Rogers, who used the term derisively, as did later opponents of President Reagan’s ‘Reaganomics’.

The nation’s top business leaders, under the umbrella of the Business Council of Australia, will also meet with US governors and top-level US company executives. Australian State Premiers, including Queensland’s Annastasia Palaszczuk, will also attend.

Business Council head Jennifer Westacott told the Sydney Morning Herald she feels that Australian business is “in the weeds of politics” and

“Meanwhile in the US they’re getting on with it.”

Westacott and Council members support the Australian corporate tax cut proposal as the only policy that can deliver jobs and growth.

Opposition leader Bill Shorten is taking the hard line – a corporate tax cut cannot help ordinary people, at a time when companies are using tax havens and keeping wages low. Shadow Treasurer Chris Bowen admits there is a case for company tax cuts, but said the LNP’s plan is unaffordable when the budget is in deficit.

The attempt to gag debate on this subject is, however, more worrying than the toadying going on in Washington. Australia ranks 19^th in an international survey of countries judged on press freedoms. Reporters without Borders (RSF) maintains the list of 180 countries, many of whom oppress the media in far more serious ways than plain old censorship.

Australian media freedoms pursued by stealth

At first glance, 19^th from 180 sounds good, but Australia has some issues, not the least of which is concentration of media ownership. The risk of self censorship is high, given the lack of job opportunities elsewhere. The 2017 survey notes that new laws in 2015 provide for prison sentences for whistleblowers who disclose information about defence matters, conditions in refugee centres or operations by the Australian Security Intelligence Organization.

I sometimes fret about a FOMM I wrote before these laws were introduced – an eyewitness account of US Marine movements after a chance encounter at a Northern Territory roadhouse.

“Aw shucks, we all just stopped to use the latrine, Ma’am.”

There’s more: a new telecommunications law has opened the door for surveillance of the metadata of journalists’ communications. Federal police raids on Labor Party parliamentarians in 2016 violated the confidentiality of sources. The Reporters without Borders report says the latter showed that authorities were “more concerned about silencing the messengers than addressing the issues of concern to the public that had been raised by their revelations”.

Meanwhile, a new draft national security bill seeks to restrict foreign interference in politics and national security. It contains secrecy and espionage provisions that could result in journalists being sent to prison for five years just for being in possession of sensitive information.

Daniel Bastard, the head of RSF’s Asia-Pacific desk, called the draft bill “oppressive and ill-conceived”.

“If this bill were passed, journalists receiving sensitive information they had not sought would automatically be in violation of the law. If this law had existed in the United States in 1974, the Watergate scandal would never have come to light.”

The free-wheeling nature of social media ensures that dissenting discourse does not stay banned for very long, though often exposed to a much smaller audience.

You may censor me, but never my T-shirts

I suppose now you want me to explain the relevance of the Right to Arm Bears T-shirt, eh? This now threadbare item was bought from a tourist shop on the Canadian side of Niagara Falls in 2010. I have been trying to find and purchase a replacement online. The manufacturer (Gildan) has similar T-shirts but none as fetching as the grumpy-looking bears wearing hunting jackets.

Wearing a shirt that makes a political point, however ironically, is an individual’s right in a free country to express an opinion. In my case it succinctly states my position on American gun laws, just as another T-shirt bought from a stall at Woodford, depicting a full-masted, 17^th century sailboat (”Boat People”) says a lot about my attitude to refugees. Perhaps I should replace it with a Save the ABC shirt. Seems like the ABC needs all the friends it can find.

*Read Emma Alberici’s revised analysis here: