The disinformation scam and other threats to free speech

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I Shrugged
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The disinformation scam and other threats to free speech

Post by I Shrugged » Fri Oct 28, 2022 4:01 pm

Here’s a long but excellent article by Glenn Greenwald on the dirty truth behind the fact-checking movement, the alliances between intelligence agencies and big tech and big media, and the mainstreaming of suppressing dissent. Wikipedia wasn’t mentioned but they are part of it.

I’ve always loved PayPal but that’s over. And I need to find a new bank. It’s inconvenient to not support some of these bad companies.

https://open.substack.com/pub/greenwald ... dium=email
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Re: The disinformation scam and other threats to free speech

Post by vnatale » Fri Oct 28, 2022 6:33 pm

I Shrugged wrote:
Fri Oct 28, 2022 4:01 pm

Here’s a long but excellent article by Glenn Greenwald on the dirty truth behind the fact-checking movement, the alliances between intelligence agencies and big tech and big media, and the mainstreaming of suppressing dissent. Wikipedia wasn’t mentioned but they are part of it.

I’ve always loved PayPal but that’s over. And I need to find a new bank. It’s inconvenient to not support some of these bad companies.

https://open.substack.com/pub/greenwald ... dium=email


Read the whole thing but in the following passage one can observe that Greenwald engages in hyperbole..

"The lesbian activist Jaimee Michell was notified by PayPal last month that the account of her activist group, Gays Against Groomers, was being immediately canceled due to unspecified rules violations. Moments later, the group — created by gay men and lesbians to oppose attempts by trans activists to teach trans dogma and highly controversial gender ideology to young schoolchildren — was notified that their account with PayPal's subsidiary, Venmo, was also canceled immediately, leaving them with few options to continue to collect donations."

They have few options if that is the way this group set itself up business-wise to collect donations. They could provide a way to make donations via credit card. And, there is no way anyone or anything could block anyone from sending a check or from making an online payment to be deducted from one's bank account.

PayPal is a private company. It can set up whatever rules it wants that users have to comply with. Same as Facebook and Twitter, both of which I am highly active in and both of which have suspended me for certain periods of time because of me abusing their rules? Do I whine about their rules? No, I adapt my behavior so that I no longer run afoul of their rules and get suspended.

You have the correct attitude. You are not liking PayPal's behavior. You are seeking an alternative to their services.
Above provided by: Vinny, who always says: "I only regret that I have but one lap to give to my cats." AND "I'm a more-is-more person."
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Re: The disinformation scam and other threats to free speech

Post by boglerdude » Fri Oct 28, 2022 8:46 pm

Alternatives such as. The Freedom Convoy had everything but bitcoin shut down. And as anyone following it knew, it was a peaceful and justified protest

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ldvDzQdIuY
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Re: The disinformation scam and other threats to free speech

Post by vnatale » Fri Oct 28, 2022 9:38 pm

boglerdude wrote:
Fri Oct 28, 2022 8:46 pm

Alternatives such as. The Freedom Convoy had everything but bitcoin shut down. And as anyone following it knew, it was a peaceful and justified protest

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ldvDzQdIuY


As I said ... paying by credit card or out of your bank account.

Those are the choices I have to pay my town's real estate taxes, vehicle excise taxes, water bill, sewer bills.

If you are an organization collecting money in any way it's up to the organization to have a number of ways for people to get money to the organization. It's solely the organization's fault if they are relying upon only one means of getting money to them. Poor organizational practices.

An easy way to play the victim.
Above provided by: Vinny, who always says: "I only regret that I have but one lap to give to my cats." AND "I'm a more-is-more person."
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Re: The disinformation scam and other threats to free speech

Post by Xan » Fri Oct 28, 2022 10:48 pm

vnatale wrote:
Fri Oct 28, 2022 9:38 pm
boglerdude wrote:
Fri Oct 28, 2022 8:46 pm
Alternatives such as. The Freedom Convoy had everything but bitcoin shut down. And as anyone following it knew, it was a peaceful and justified protest

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ldvDzQdIuY
As I said ... paying by credit card or out of your bank account.

Those are the choices I have to pay my town's real estate taxes, vehicle excise taxes, water bill, sewer bills.

If you are an organization collecting money in any way it's up to the organization to have a number of ways for people to get money to the organization. It's solely the organization's fault if they are relying upon only one means of getting money to them. Poor organizational practices.

An easy way to play the victim.
You need a credit card processor to take credit cards. PayPal is one. You also need a processor to accept ACH transfers.
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Re: The disinformation scam and other threats to free speech

Post by vnatale » Sat Oct 29, 2022 12:21 am

Xan wrote:
Fri Oct 28, 2022 10:48 pm

vnatale wrote:
Fri Oct 28, 2022 9:38 pm

boglerdude wrote:
Fri Oct 28, 2022 8:46 pm

Alternatives such as. The Freedom Convoy had everything but bitcoin shut down. And as anyone following it knew, it was a peaceful and justified protest

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ldvDzQdIuY


As I said ... paying by credit card or out of your bank account.

Those are the choices I have to pay my town's real estate taxes, vehicle excise taxes, water bill, sewer bills.

If you are an organization collecting money in any way it's up to the organization to have a number of ways for people to get money to the organization. It's solely the organization's fault if they are relying upon only one means of getting money to them. Poor organizational practices.

An easy way to play the victim.


You need a credit card processor to take credit cards. PayPal is one. You also need a processor to accept ACH transfers.


Yes. PayPal is ONE. There are many other credit card processors to choose from.

This site is not impartial but just one example of how one can find many alternatives to PayPal to process credit card payments.

https://best-ccp.com/

As far as ACH transfers go ... it took me all of five seconds to find this one alternative:

https://www.bill.com/lp/ach?utm_source= ... 65aaab732d

If you are a serious organization receiving money you can provide alternatives to PayPal.
Above provided by: Vinny, who always says: "I only regret that I have but one lap to give to my cats." AND "I'm a more-is-more person."
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Re: The disinformation scam and other threats to free speech

Post by joypog » Sat Oct 29, 2022 12:26 am

boglerdude wrote:
Fri Oct 28, 2022 8:46 pm
Alternatives such as. The Freedom Convoy had everything but bitcoin shut down. And as anyone following it knew, it was a peaceful and justified protest
Except for the Canadians, including the guys at Rational Reminder podcast, who say it was NOT a peaceful protest.
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Re: The disinformation scam and other threats to free speech

Post by boglerdude » Sat Oct 29, 2022 2:50 am

Anyone following directly, comrade. I watched streams from multiple sources. And also with my own lyin' eyes, saw the overflow hospitals in LA county never used. Just go directly to the most sensible bottom line: pandemic theater to distract from the inflationary bailout was worth it. Minimum wage laws increase unemployment, but if nominal wages fall, people riot.

https://old.reddit.com/r/LockdownSkepti ... o_for_the/
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Re: The disinformation scam and other threats to free speech

Post by I Shrugged » Sat Oct 29, 2022 7:26 am

Vinny, they froze people’s bank accounts. How does a normal person then live, let alone send money to a cause?

See the forest, not just the trees.
Last edited by I Shrugged on Sat Oct 29, 2022 7:29 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: The disinformation scam and other threats to free speech

Post by I Shrugged » Sat Oct 29, 2022 7:29 am

This is a holistic movement. If you have any reach with dissenting thoughts, you can be free speech and financially strangled. Yay digital money!

And the big institutions are falling all over themselves to do it! In supposedly the “freest country on earth”.
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Re: The disinformation scam and other threats to free speech

Post by joypog » Sat Oct 29, 2022 7:46 am

boglerdude wrote:
Sat Oct 29, 2022 2:50 am
Anyone following directly, comrade. I watched streams from multiple sources. And also with my own lyin' eyes, saw the overflow hospitals in LA county never used. Just go directly to the most sensible bottom line: pandemic theater to distract from the inflationary bailout was worth it. Minimum wage laws increase unemployment, but if nominal wages fall, people riot.

https://old.reddit.com/r/LockdownSkepti ... o_for_the/
Those guys live in the city. I'd rather trust their witness than your lyin' eyes from self-selected information feed.
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Re: The disinformation scam and other threats to free speech

Post by vnatale » Sat Oct 29, 2022 6:00 pm

I Shrugged wrote:
Sat Oct 29, 2022 7:26 am

Vinny, they froze people’s bank accounts. How does a normal person then live, let alone send money to a cause?

See the forest, not just the trees.


I just did a quick scan of the article. Where does it at all say what you wrote above?

This seems to be a key sentence in the article:

" The creation of that group was in response to the 2010 demands made by then-Sen. Joseph Lieberman (D-CT), in his capacity as Chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, along with other war hawks in both parties, that financial services companies such as the online payment processor PayPal, credit card companies MasterCard and Visa, and the Bank of America all terminated the accounts of WikiLeaks as punishment for the group's publication of the Iraq and Afghanistan war logs: "

There is one bank named - the Bank of America. Once Bank of America terminated their account they had at least a thousand choices of other banks to move their bank account to.

Where in the article does it state that someone like you or I had our bank account frozen, aside from what PayPal chose to do?
Above provided by: Vinny, who always says: "I only regret that I have but one lap to give to my cats." AND "I'm a more-is-more person."
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Re: The disinformation scam and other threats to free speech

Post by boglerdude » Sat Oct 29, 2022 8:51 pm

Vinny have you ever tried to convince anyone to eat less meat. Or buy non-factory farmed
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Re: The disinformation scam and other threats to free speech

Post by vnatale » Sat Oct 29, 2022 10:48 pm

boglerdude wrote:
Sat Oct 29, 2022 8:51 pm

Vinny have you ever tried to convince anyone to eat less meat. Or buy non-factory farmed


Never.

On certain things I like to let people come to their own decisions with no unsolicited input from me. Or, wait until they ask for my input because they are considering that option.
Above provided by: Vinny, who always says: "I only regret that I have but one lap to give to my cats." AND "I'm a more-is-more person."
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Re: The disinformation scam and other threats to free speech

Post by Mountaineer » Sun Oct 30, 2022 5:26 am

vnatale wrote:
Sat Oct 29, 2022 10:48 pm
boglerdude wrote:
Sat Oct 29, 2022 8:51 pm
Vinny have you ever tried to convince anyone to eat less meat. Or buy non-factory farmed
Never.

On certain things I like to let people come to their own decisions with no unsolicited input from me. Or, wait until they ask for my input because they are considering that option.
Vinny, that is almost always the best strategy In my experience. Better to just listen carefully, ask questions to understand where the person is coming from, and then teach, teach, and teach rather than tell, tell, and tell and come across as a know-it-all and turn people away.
DNA has its own language (code), and language requires intelligence. There is no known mechanism by which matter can give birth to information, let alone language. It is unreasonable to believe the world could have happened by chance.
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