Sometimes Free Speech is Just Tuna!

The concept of Free Speech in the Internet Age is little more than a Tuna! Scheme. More specifically, the monetization of content on the social platforms has driven content creators to invent statements with the sole intent of earning clicks in the pay-per-click economy. Being seen and inducing engagement rises above the veracity of the claim to free speech and railing against censorship. The buying and selling of misinformation is the essence of Tuna!

The advent of AI image generation and manipulation of otherwise true imagery has only added to the debate on what is actually protected free speech. Yelling "fire" on a crowded theater has never been interpreted as a right someone has pursuant to the 1st Amendment of the US Constitution. Claiming that this {Democrat} politician is {a pedophile/eats babies/engages in human trafficking} without any proof or even evidence by a victim is not much different than the yelling of Fire as cited above.

Making claims of Haitian immigrants eating dogs and cats in Ohio has resulted in bomb threats and death threats to local residents and their schools. For some people who echo the original messages it may be a matter of perverted fun. For others, such as a certain President and Vice President candidate, it accrues political value. The other part of the Tuna! Scheme is the neglecting of the consequences.

In the months ahead of US elections distortions of reality and outright lies by candidates and people who support them becomes mot du jour.  With the multitude of people piling on the message gets passed along to a far wider audience. That viral phenomenon is driven by the monetization of the content. To be sure, very few sentiments grow organically on their own. Potential viral content is picked by the platform algorithms and pushed to an audience which is more likely to engage with it. The actual content is not important. Only its relentless repetition via the Internet matters.

Instead of crafting an important message and putting out for the world to see, the messages are more than likely negatives or fake emotional calls to action. After every tragic event in the country, thoughts and prayers get sent to the victims and their families. Images of children in peril and pets being lost get huge followings. Claims of vaccine injuries proliferate while posts attesting to how they were spared the suffering and death from the virus itself die on the vine. The injury type posts are exactly as difficult to prove as the ones about being spared. The spread of messaging about thoughts and prayers ever saving someone are similarly undocumentable but mostly off-limits to criticism due to their Deep Faith nature.

The content of a message may be a matter of free speech but the repeating of it is only a matter of how loud the message becomes. Platforms curtailing the number of times it does not push out a message is not censorship. They "censor" every message which doesn’t reach the status of "viral". Most people posting on social media platforms do not have large audiences to spread their messages to. Those who do obtained their followings via the "push" the platforms previously made. Either way, the spread of the message is machine driven rather than interest or veracity driven.

Then there is the motivations. So much of the misinformation is driven by an agenda. The intent is to subvert the truth and replace it with "alternative facts" and false narratives.

The platforms sell advertising and make money. The creators receive a share for their efforts. Lies and inflammatory rhetoric sell better. After a short interval the messages enter the public consciousness and that is where the damage gets done. It is all for the money which can be made. The messages may do harm, but never mind, it earned fame and fortune for the person who said it.

 

Y2K and Today's Eclipse Paranoia

 

Y2K and Today's Eclipse Paranoia

Fake Total Solar Eclipse photo

It doesn't seem to me to have been a quarter century ago that the world was fretting about what the "millennium bug" was going to do to the global economy, financial institutions and electronic systems everywhere. Hoopla about the so called Y2K bug was fomenting visions of the apocalypse and End Times. It all rested on the fact that in the early days of digital computing words of memory were expensive and many CPUs operated with only 32,000 bytes on memory. To conserve storage and computing speed the programmers and designers figured a 2-byte date for the year would suffice. Therefore 1970 was only stored as 70. Of course back when the decision was made there was in excess of fifty years to concern ourselves with the shortfall of that design.

As we approached the 21st century many pundits realized that 1999 would be 99 but 2000 would become 00 as in 1900 not 2000. All types of cataclysms were predicted. None of them ever materialized. That was not without major retooling of programs and databases though. The fact that there was a stirring of fear we actually did something to avert the collapse of our electronic world.

Humans have always looked for signs of the End Times. The birth of Christianity with its Book of Revelation and the prophesy of a Second coming of Christ only amplified the conjecture. Even the notion of the Mayan calendar ending in mid- 2012 has sent people scrambling for the safety of some sort of sanctuary against some nebulous peril. After nothing happened, some pundits even suggest we actually DID transition into an alternate dimension and most people remain unawares of it.

In March 2024 numerologists, astrologers and religious zealots believe the soon approaching total solar eclipse heralds the end of one era and the beginning of another. They suggest there will be major upheavals and disruptions which will last possibly for many years if not a human lifetime.

They point to the fact that the April 8, path of totality will pass over 7 towns in the US named Ninevah as proof there is some biblical connection. An earlier total eclipse in August 21, 2017 crossed over the American continent passing over an alleged 7 towns named Salem and intersects with the 2024 path at a point near Paducah, Kentucky. The third 7-reference is it has been 7 years since the last eclipse crossing the North American continent. Wow, three 7s, I guess I should bet of the lottery.

Not only is there an upcoming total solar eclipse crossing North America, buy worry is being stoked for there being a Corona Mass Ejection (CME) from the sun due soon and could disrupt radio communications and utility grids. Earthquakes and volcanoes are predicted as signs from God that there is a deity connection.

A comet is in earth's vicinity and is being pulled into the gravity well of the Sun. It may come close to earth and on some future passage might strike the planet (or not.) In 100 years or so from now, everyone alive today will be dead anyway. So why worry?

Never underestimate the gullibility of humans in large numbers. There are so many people acting like summer campers sitting around an evening bonfire scaring each other relating tales of ghosts, monsters and axe murderers. I swear all those stories are absolutely true. "It floats."

So worrisome is the eclipse the Governor of Oklahoma has activated National Guard troops to be ready for "something." Various conspiracy mongers, like Alex Jones, suggest there is some nefarious government plans to create an incident. Tiktokkers are touting the prospects of natural disasters and other perils.

The biggest danger comes from the 100s of thousands of eclipse-watchers converging on small towns in the path of totality in order to see this event. Several communities have suggested residents stock up on a week's worth of food and fuel in preparation. Such a recommendation has little to do with a breakdown of the supply chain or infrastructure failures as it does the clearance of shelves and gasoline by the influx of travelers who came unprepared to make the trek and return without creating a negative impact by their presence.

One might consider that the flow of itinerants into the countryside as being like a microcosm of what would happen if a major disruption actually did take place. I think it will be interesting to see how the public acts and how communities respond.