I’ve been on a boycotting craze these days and I’m finding it’s rather easy. We no longer buy products we used to and what do you know? We didn’t need them or their BS manufacturers and are doing just fine without them! It only sounds impossible but once you do it you realize it’s freeing.
I’ll boycott any product that censors or refuses to advertise on platforms that support alternative narratives. If that happens to be almost everything out there than so be it. I’m determined. I’d love a simpler life of less anyway. Amazon previously made well over $8000 per year from our family (lots in subscribe and save) and I’ve been slowly switching over to buy what we do from other places now, and going back to in-person shopping. Less convenient yes, but Bezos pi**ed me off majorly and I’m willing to be inconvenienced. We are now on track to give them less than $500 of business this year. That’s a huge loss to them from just one family. I did that with Target before too and they lost thousands from us in that year and I’ve never shopped with them again, short of an emergency stop maybe once a year at most. Lol It feels good. I sleep better at night with a smile on my face. 😊
I stopped shopping Target years ago. Their stuff is over priced, not as pretty (women's clothing), wear out just as fast as something from Wally World, and it just kinda creeps me out to go in there.
My best guess is for repeatedly posting screenshots of our official covid page on our governor's covid posts, but of course they never actually tell you anything.
I'm still effectively banned by Facebook, which actually has caused me significant economic harm because I can't reach the people who know me best and might otherwise subscribe to this Substack.
I hereby publicly call-out Elon Musk and X for banning your content. That's an outrage too. You produce some of the best content on the Internet.
Yes, links work fine, but embedding twitter posts into Substack doesn't work. Back 'in the day', you could just paste the Twitter URL into your Substack article and it would pop up the whole tweet. Now if I want to have the same functionality I have to take a screenshot of the Twitter page and then manually load the link -- then it pops up in a new window instead of (for example) playing the embedded video right in the Substack window.
Anyone who goes after the DOD with receipts is banned. Musk is on DOD payroll. He is a US government employee/contractor via SpaceX for the war machine.
Edit: I will never go back to social media. It's a Hundred Flowers campaign and I have no interest.
Whoa, whoa, whoa! I agree with Bill Rice, Jr. That's disturbing. As well as for you Bill, regarding Facebook. WTF? Well, it's their monkey, and their show. But shit....
While I hope they succeed, I doubt they will. It's sort of a freedom of association issue so far as I can see. Seems they'd have to prove it was anticompetitive behavior or somehow gov't directed. Boycotts and pushback from the customer base are the only ways out of the conundrum that I can see.
Wanted to comment on: "It’s virtually impossible to imagine a scenario where thousands of marketing executives of well-known brands all independently decided to boycott sites that are extremely popular with their regular customers or potential customers."
Well, I work adjacent to corporate Marketing (though not for any of those co's) and can tell you from personal experience the ideological groupthink really is that strong. Even more so within PR/ad agencies. The indoctrination that occurred in college really was that effective. The groupthink is strictly governed so that even trying to speak a moderate or mildly conservative position is not just frowned upon, but will result in discipline for "harming" coworkers. You cannot even point out actual market data showing what customers want unless it is filtered through a leftist lens. Believe me, I've tried. The gatekeepers (always women, BTW) won't allow the questions to be asked in surveys if they suspect the result won't go the way they want. The upper level C-suite honestly believes the gaslighting that most of the country agrees with the leftist nonsense. They get their news from those reporting to them. Hence, filtered. That's all true even at the co. I work for right now, which is not nearly as "woke" as most other big co's.
Though I will say on the flip side of that - clearly co's like Pfizer are being paid to advertise on MSM like MSNBC and CNN. They simply don't have the viewership to justify the ad spend on their shows. So, something is up there. I suspect gov't "research grant" money is handed out with a wink and a nod knowing it will be used to prop up those gov't propaganda channels.
Why would any company advertise on CNN or CNBC, etc? I used to sell advertising myself. It's supposed to be all about the number of eyeballs you reach and the attractiveness of the target demo. The conservative demo is actually the best demo - upper middle class, and civic minded. I guess nobody on Madison Avenue wants to reach half the population.
I agree about the level of groupthink, but I still think the boycotts are intentional.
I totally agree it's intentional. And I agree the moderate to conservative demo is the best for a lot of reasons: size, disposable income, brand loyalty, etc. I just think it's intentional b/c they buy into the propaganda, largely due to the education they received in college post-1990s. The vast majority of the decision makers honestly believe anyone who disagrees with the leftist narrative is a bad person and not worthy of their products or services. I work in B2B finance (a co. of 7k people) and it's not uncommon for people to advocate for communism in team meetings. Our clients - mostly small to mid-sized businesses - hate this stuff, but it has no effect on the co. culture. It's kind of insane. It's a complete inversion of basic business principles. I hope that as doing business gets harder due to the rising interest rates and a tightening economy, this dynamic changes.
Legally, however, it seems very similar to me to the censorship case that went to SCOTUS where SCOTUS found the co's were doing the censorship of their own volition. So, I'm not feeling good that this one will work out differently. Of course, I hope I am wrong.
The companies don't need strong-arming from the government to know what to censor. For a while I thought Missouri v. Biden could be a hugely significant case if the USSC sided with Missouri. Then I realized nothing would happen to the censoring companies and they would keep censoring even if someone from the White House wasn't pressuring them to do that. The group think is amazing to behold. It didn't get you, though!
I hear you. It's a sad state. I do hope that having some major voices coming out for Trump changes things. Everything flows top-down in the corporate world. What the people supplying the money say they like is what leadership (C-suite) and then management (Directors, VPs) say they like. So, when big name VCs start backing Trump or when people see that Rogan and Tucker have audiences dwarfing anything anyone in the MSM has, it gives me hope. Still, it's all a little weird since it's all so self-sabotaging for co's to align with tiny fractions of the country against the majority.
Thank you. "Groupthink" is exactly the term I was looking for to describe the instinctive, thought-free, reaction we instantly have to the slightest hint that someone isn't on our wavelength. The business juggernaut doesn't need to be told that Musk is a threat. Are you for us, or against us? Simple. And we work in exactly the same way!
I will say, for me rumble has been an important source of counter-narrative videos in the past few years. Ditto Bitchute and Odysee.
Bitchute seems to be loading a bit faster these days but recently it stopped showing specific dates, which I can't say I like.
Twitter I stay away from. I have transcribed a few videos that were attached to tweets, which I came upon (usually) in some Substack post. I don't ever go in and scroll around in Twitter. I don't trust it, it's addictive by design and algo-city.
Maybe not. Twitter, post Musk, is much different than Twitter pre-Musk (even though it's still inexplicably banning my friend Simulation Commander). Personally, I never figured out how to use Twitter and, although I have an account, I don't think I've gotten two "likes" on that platform.
I think the platform is now more popular than ever. You can tell this because it was THE place where everyone went to get news of Trump's assassination attempt. Even all the journalists of MSM, who hate it, go there all the time.
"Judge Amit P. Mehta of U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia said in a 277-page ruling that Google had abused a monopoly over the search business. The Justice Department and states had sued Google, accusing it of illegally cementing its dominance, in part, by paying other companies, like Apple and Samsung, billions of dollars a year to have Google automatically handle search queries on their smartphones and web browsers.
“Google is a monopolist, and it has acted as one to maintain its monopoly,” Judge Mehta said in his ruling.
The ruling is a harsh verdict on the rise of giant technology companies that have used their roots in the internet to influence the way we shop, consume information and search online — and indicates a potential limit of Big Tech’s power. It is likely to influence other government antitrust lawsuits against Google, Apple, Amazon and Meta, the owner of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp. The last significant antitrust ruling against a tech company targeted Microsoft more than two decades ago."
How to end corporate power in MSM, internet-platforms, health, politics, etc., etc. ?
Simple but at an expense !!!
END
- All kinds of lobbying, applying harshest penalties/incarceration for active AND passive bribe,
- People should face the fact that it's THEM who have to fund these institutions, NOT corporations if
they seek genuine information ...
There are NO freebies !! Either you
- are lied to 24/7/365 for free (current affairs) and treated like a dumb sheeple or
- YOU sponsor and sustain genuine media and politics with a moderate contribution keeping your dignity as an informed and respected (feared) citizen ...
Any other options available ??
With current digital facilities available almost to everyone, this could be implemented in a matter of days/weeks.
I am an enthusiastic reader of your posts. Like you, I yearn to access that elusive commodity, "the truth'. In that spirit, while it's clear from this - “As early as November of 2022, Danish energy company and GARM member Ørsted, contacted GARM to discuss “the Twitter situation” and “a possible boycott.” - that there's a conspiracy, I feel that like-minded people and their institutions instantly recognize, without the need for formal agreement, what behavior they are against, and act instinctively in concert. As an example, if you are a multi-jabbed supporter of the C-19 response, the simple introduction of the word "plandemic" into a conversation by a presumed friend will instantly alert you that they are the enemy. Loyalty, not rationality, is the glue that coheres all groups. Within the group no rational defense is necessary. Outside the group no rational defense is possible. That is the dilemma every minority - in fact every competing group - faces. Money and power, not truth, rule our godless world. To access the latter one must abandon the former; thus the importance of patrons (with a diplomatic foot in either camp) down through the ages!
Advertising $ are a tiny tool (of course not to the little business people) in the battles of this war we're all fighting.
Free speech known as Protest is labeled as Terrorism (hyperbole becomes this Woke common thought... thense propaganda via the ubiquitous sources, with alternate views censored) and what happens next:
YOU POST A CRITICISM of two-tiered justice, migrant crime or the contrarian view of news and YOU ARE AN INTERNATIONAL TERRORIST!
Elon Musk, his Yakking Rhino, and 'X' censor. They claim people suffering onchocerciasis are horses or cows, so should stop using ivermectin to prevent blindness. Not enough blind horses and cows, I suppose! What disingenuous hypocrites to file suit to stop censorship when they themselves are culpable!
I’ve been on a boycotting craze these days and I’m finding it’s rather easy. We no longer buy products we used to and what do you know? We didn’t need them or their BS manufacturers and are doing just fine without them! It only sounds impossible but once you do it you realize it’s freeing.
I’ll boycott any product that censors or refuses to advertise on platforms that support alternative narratives. If that happens to be almost everything out there than so be it. I’m determined. I’d love a simpler life of less anyway. Amazon previously made well over $8000 per year from our family (lots in subscribe and save) and I’ve been slowly switching over to buy what we do from other places now, and going back to in-person shopping. Less convenient yes, but Bezos pi**ed me off majorly and I’m willing to be inconvenienced. We are now on track to give them less than $500 of business this year. That’s a huge loss to them from just one family. I did that with Target before too and they lost thousands from us in that year and I’ve never shopped with them again, short of an emergency stop maybe once a year at most. Lol It feels good. I sleep better at night with a smile on my face. 😊
Target lost me with their participation in grooming children into the r@inb0w thing.
I stopped shopping Target years ago. Their stuff is over priced, not as pretty (women's clothing), wear out just as fast as something from Wally World, and it just kinda creeps me out to go in there.
I wish them all the best, but it's a little hard to get too excited when I'm still banned from Twitter.
Good gosh. That's disturbing. Do you have any idea why?
My best guess is for repeatedly posting screenshots of our official covid page on our governor's covid posts, but of course they never actually tell you anything.
I'm still effectively banned by Facebook, which actually has caused me significant economic harm because I can't reach the people who know me best and might otherwise subscribe to this Substack.
I hereby publicly call-out Elon Musk and X for banning your content. That's an outrage too. You produce some of the best content on the Internet.
He's still hung up on that tiff that he had with Substack a while ago -- you still can't embed Twitter posts in Substack or vice versa.
He's doing some things right ... or else the Establishment would be ignoring him and there wouldn't be an X advertising ban in place.
Bill, respectfully suggest you familiarise yourself with the term kayfabe. Musk is the establishment.
I don't do twitter/X but I clinked on a link from SS & was directed there... so it CAN be done from what I barely understand.
See: You have to clink on the square thing that says Sabrina Wallace.
https://myfriendlizzie.substack.com/p/sabrina-wallace
Maybe she just knows a work around?
Best :)
I put Twitter links in my stories fairly often. I think they work.
Yes, links work fine, but embedding twitter posts into Substack doesn't work. Back 'in the day', you could just paste the Twitter URL into your Substack article and it would pop up the whole tweet. Now if I want to have the same functionality I have to take a screenshot of the Twitter page and then manually load the link -- then it pops up in a new window instead of (for example) playing the embedded video right in the Substack window.
While I don't have a Substack, could you please also add me? I've appealed several times, all ignored.
I am also still banned.
Anyone who goes after the DOD with receipts is banned. Musk is on DOD payroll. He is a US government employee/contractor via SpaceX for the war machine.
Edit: I will never go back to social media. It's a Hundred Flowers campaign and I have no interest.
Whoa, whoa, whoa! I agree with Bill Rice, Jr. That's disturbing. As well as for you Bill, regarding Facebook. WTF? Well, it's their monkey, and their show. But shit....
Was your name the same there? I just might try to complain on Musk’s feed on your behalf ….
It was, but I wouldn't start posting there in earnest again even if I got re-instated. Fool me once........
vote with your wallet, it is the only one they care af about
While I hope they succeed, I doubt they will. It's sort of a freedom of association issue so far as I can see. Seems they'd have to prove it was anticompetitive behavior or somehow gov't directed. Boycotts and pushback from the customer base are the only ways out of the conundrum that I can see.
Wanted to comment on: "It’s virtually impossible to imagine a scenario where thousands of marketing executives of well-known brands all independently decided to boycott sites that are extremely popular with their regular customers or potential customers."
Well, I work adjacent to corporate Marketing (though not for any of those co's) and can tell you from personal experience the ideological groupthink really is that strong. Even more so within PR/ad agencies. The indoctrination that occurred in college really was that effective. The groupthink is strictly governed so that even trying to speak a moderate or mildly conservative position is not just frowned upon, but will result in discipline for "harming" coworkers. You cannot even point out actual market data showing what customers want unless it is filtered through a leftist lens. Believe me, I've tried. The gatekeepers (always women, BTW) won't allow the questions to be asked in surveys if they suspect the result won't go the way they want. The upper level C-suite honestly believes the gaslighting that most of the country agrees with the leftist nonsense. They get their news from those reporting to them. Hence, filtered. That's all true even at the co. I work for right now, which is not nearly as "woke" as most other big co's.
Though I will say on the flip side of that - clearly co's like Pfizer are being paid to advertise on MSM like MSNBC and CNN. They simply don't have the viewership to justify the ad spend on their shows. So, something is up there. I suspect gov't "research grant" money is handed out with a wink and a nod knowing it will be used to prop up those gov't propaganda channels.
Why would any company advertise on CNN or CNBC, etc? I used to sell advertising myself. It's supposed to be all about the number of eyeballs you reach and the attractiveness of the target demo. The conservative demo is actually the best demo - upper middle class, and civic minded. I guess nobody on Madison Avenue wants to reach half the population.
I agree about the level of groupthink, but I still think the boycotts are intentional.
I totally agree it's intentional. And I agree the moderate to conservative demo is the best for a lot of reasons: size, disposable income, brand loyalty, etc. I just think it's intentional b/c they buy into the propaganda, largely due to the education they received in college post-1990s. The vast majority of the decision makers honestly believe anyone who disagrees with the leftist narrative is a bad person and not worthy of their products or services. I work in B2B finance (a co. of 7k people) and it's not uncommon for people to advocate for communism in team meetings. Our clients - mostly small to mid-sized businesses - hate this stuff, but it has no effect on the co. culture. It's kind of insane. It's a complete inversion of basic business principles. I hope that as doing business gets harder due to the rising interest rates and a tightening economy, this dynamic changes.
Legally, however, it seems very similar to me to the censorship case that went to SCOTUS where SCOTUS found the co's were doing the censorship of their own volition. So, I'm not feeling good that this one will work out differently. Of course, I hope I am wrong.
The companies don't need strong-arming from the government to know what to censor. For a while I thought Missouri v. Biden could be a hugely significant case if the USSC sided with Missouri. Then I realized nothing would happen to the censoring companies and they would keep censoring even if someone from the White House wasn't pressuring them to do that. The group think is amazing to behold. It didn't get you, though!
Your assessment of the industry is bleak. I wouldn't have thought the left has taken it over so completely. bad news for the future.
I hear you. It's a sad state. I do hope that having some major voices coming out for Trump changes things. Everything flows top-down in the corporate world. What the people supplying the money say they like is what leadership (C-suite) and then management (Directors, VPs) say they like. So, when big name VCs start backing Trump or when people see that Rogan and Tucker have audiences dwarfing anything anyone in the MSM has, it gives me hope. Still, it's all a little weird since it's all so self-sabotaging for co's to align with tiny fractions of the country against the majority.
Thank you. "Groupthink" is exactly the term I was looking for to describe the instinctive, thought-free, reaction we instantly have to the slightest hint that someone isn't on our wavelength. The business juggernaut doesn't need to be told that Musk is a threat. Are you for us, or against us? Simple. And we work in exactly the same way!
Let's get ready to RUMBLE!!!!
Screw YT, FB, LinkedIn, etc.
Bill, as ever, thanks for reporting.
I will say, for me rumble has been an important source of counter-narrative videos in the past few years. Ditto Bitchute and Odysee.
Bitchute seems to be loading a bit faster these days but recently it stopped showing specific dates, which I can't say I like.
Twitter I stay away from. I have transcribed a few videos that were attached to tweets, which I came upon (usually) in some Substack post. I don't ever go in and scroll around in Twitter. I don't trust it, it's addictive by design and algo-city.
Rumble is more important than many of us might realize.
Indeed!
Just read the headline. But gotta say, do you realize theil runs rumble, and musk is building skynet as we speak. They're not on our side.
Maybe not. Twitter, post Musk, is much different than Twitter pre-Musk (even though it's still inexplicably banning my friend Simulation Commander). Personally, I never figured out how to use Twitter and, although I have an account, I don't think I've gotten two "likes" on that platform.
I think the platform is now more popular than ever. You can tell this because it was THE place where everyone went to get news of Trump's assassination attempt. Even all the journalists of MSM, who hate it, go there all the time.
In a related ruling:
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/05/technology/google-antitrust-ruling.html
So much for Google.gov ;-)
"Judge Amit P. Mehta of U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia said in a 277-page ruling that Google had abused a monopoly over the search business. The Justice Department and states had sued Google, accusing it of illegally cementing its dominance, in part, by paying other companies, like Apple and Samsung, billions of dollars a year to have Google automatically handle search queries on their smartphones and web browsers.
“Google is a monopolist, and it has acted as one to maintain its monopoly,” Judge Mehta said in his ruling.
The ruling is a harsh verdict on the rise of giant technology companies that have used their roots in the internet to influence the way we shop, consume information and search online — and indicates a potential limit of Big Tech’s power. It is likely to influence other government antitrust lawsuits against Google, Apple, Amazon and Meta, the owner of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp. The last significant antitrust ruling against a tech company targeted Microsoft more than two decades ago."
People want unbiased, independent info ?? ...
How to end corporate power in MSM, internet-platforms, health, politics, etc., etc. ?
Simple but at an expense !!!
END
- All kinds of lobbying, applying harshest penalties/incarceration for active AND passive bribe,
- People should face the fact that it's THEM who have to fund these institutions, NOT corporations if
they seek genuine information ...
There are NO freebies !! Either you
- are lied to 24/7/365 for free (current affairs) and treated like a dumb sheeple or
- YOU sponsor and sustain genuine media and politics with a moderate contribution keeping your dignity as an informed and respected (feared) citizen ...
Any other options available ??
With current digital facilities available almost to everyone, this could be implemented in a matter of days/weeks.
I am an enthusiastic reader of your posts. Like you, I yearn to access that elusive commodity, "the truth'. In that spirit, while it's clear from this - “As early as November of 2022, Danish energy company and GARM member Ørsted, contacted GARM to discuss “the Twitter situation” and “a possible boycott.” - that there's a conspiracy, I feel that like-minded people and their institutions instantly recognize, without the need for formal agreement, what behavior they are against, and act instinctively in concert. As an example, if you are a multi-jabbed supporter of the C-19 response, the simple introduction of the word "plandemic" into a conversation by a presumed friend will instantly alert you that they are the enemy. Loyalty, not rationality, is the glue that coheres all groups. Within the group no rational defense is necessary. Outside the group no rational defense is possible. That is the dilemma every minority - in fact every competing group - faces. Money and power, not truth, rule our godless world. To access the latter one must abandon the former; thus the importance of patrons (with a diplomatic foot in either camp) down through the ages!
https://www.theylied.ca/Censorship.shtml
.
https://www.theylied.ca/MainstreamMedia.shtml
.
https://www.theylied.ca/Propaganda.shtml
.
It would be nice to have a dynamic top ten list of businesses most deserving a boycott.
Musk's protestations are the pot calling the kettle black.
Twitter deliberately supresses links to Substack.
Twitter wantonly tolerates proliferation of sex bots, which are likely used to mark specific accounts.
Twitter amplifies and deamplifies accounts in a non arbitrary fashion, etc., etc.
Bill -
It gets worse!
Advertising $ are a tiny tool (of course not to the little business people) in the battles of this war we're all fighting.
Free speech known as Protest is labeled as Terrorism (hyperbole becomes this Woke common thought... thense propaganda via the ubiquitous sources, with alternate views censored) and what happens next:
YOU POST A CRITICISM of two-tiered justice, migrant crime or the contrarian view of news and YOU ARE AN INTERNATIONAL TERRORIST!
See this from The National Pulse:
https://thenationalpulse.com/2024/08/07/uk-threatens-to-extradite-overseas-social-media-users-who-criticize-mass-migration-two-tier-policing/
Elon Musk, his Yakking Rhino, and 'X' censor. They claim people suffering onchocerciasis are horses or cows, so should stop using ivermectin to prevent blindness. Not enough blind horses and cows, I suppose! What disingenuous hypocrites to file suit to stop censorship when they themselves are culpable!