Instagram Censorship
Instagram is threatening to cancel me because they don't like my cash tag.
This morning, I got a notice from Instagram that one of my comments has been removed for āpromoting hate speech or symbols.ā The comment in question, ā$bloatedlesbian.ā That was the entire comment that Instagram said is hate speech. This is in fact my cash tag. I posted it as a reply to the weekly posts that Cash does when they give out free money to Cash App holder. $bloatedlesbian is my cash tag. Thatās all. Itās also used as my twitter handle and my gmail address, and in other places Iām probably forgetting.
Instagram also mentioned that they may cancel my account because of this āinfraction.ā When I went to appeal this decision in the app, it only gave me a button to press labeled āappealā (or something like that) without giving me any space to write my explanation as to why itās not hate speech.
This is the second time this has happened to me in a month, so I can only imagine that some Charles Bronson wannabe Karen his it out for me. The problem is, anyone who wants anyone cancelled can easily do so by reporting ridiculous innocuous posts/comments and the bots will err on the side of censorship.
This is fucking obscene. This cyber totalitarianism is, in my opinion, the result of Trump PTSD. The problem is, however, itās going to make a return by Trump and his ilk more likely.
Iām a socialist. Iām left of a liberal. But what actions like this do is censor everyoneā¦ not just Trumpies and antivaxxers. And when people like me get censored by other liberals, the effect is that people like me are pushed to the right. And people already on the right dig their heels in further to their current inflexible opinions.
Lefties mostly stay silent on these issues. My orange pill friends defend me, who are mostly libertarian types if I have to generalize but why are my lefties silent? I think itās because they either agree with the censorship or theyāre afraid of being thought of as Trumpies, antivaxxers, or Republicans if they speak out against this censorship.
This is dangerous for me. Bloatedlesbian is not just my cash tag. Itās also my email address. If all of these things get cancelled it causes me to lose the ability to express myself. You might think I should change these names and conform to the will of the totalitarians who want to censor every adjective but to do so would be to turn off my self-expression because that is not me.
I live in America. I am allowed to express myself as I see fit and it is definitely NOT hate speech. I also donāt owe anyone an explanation as to why itās not. As an artist, I challenge people to figure shit out for themselves. If artists spoon feed the point of the art to the audience, then whatās the point of the art?
Itās entirely possible that this substack will get banned too. I probably should just do this on my own with a combination of wordpress and woo commerce but itās a lot of time to spend doing something with limited income generated from my small audience.
I know that this isnāt black and white. People say dangerous shit on the internet, especially now with all this horrible antivax nonsense. Itās horrible and mis/disinformation get people killed, but killing free speech is just a knee-jerk reaction that doesnāt help the problem. It makes it worse because it makes people more glued with their options. Itās much harder to argue with someone than it is to just report them.
I feel like this all started when Alex Jones was banned from YouTube a few years ago. This also caused a big divide between myself and my podcast audience. They, along with most lefties, applauded when Jones was removed because he says horrible damaging things. I was not. I said it was a slippery slope and that if Jones can be removed from YouTube (and iTunes for that matter) than so can Iā¦ slowly, over time. And thatās exactly whatās happening.
Meanwhile, if this substack disappears look for me at yeastradio.com and insanefilms.com. Itās much harder to cancel ISP hosted web sites than to pull me off of cunty platforms. Twitter seems to be the least likely platform to cancel me right now (@bloatedlesbian) but who knows?
Iām too exhausted to finish this post. Iām making it a free post since itās not a stream of cuntjuiceness. Most of my posts are paid. I do this as a way to get income for my podcast while keeping my podcast totally free. So if you want to support me, you can get a paid subscription to this substack and read the unfiltered garbage from my brain several days a week.
Silence = Death as we used to say in the 80ās about AIDS. Silence is also the death of art.
Facebook is obvs anti-lesbian, Madge. Theyāre the ones who should be canceled.