Censorship is Bad…Unless You’re a False Skeptic

Some of you may have wondered why I haven’t posted much over the past year. Honestly, the little Vaccine/Autism war has grown tiresome for me, and I find myself growing increasingly bored with the same drivel coming from the false skeptic community when it comes to defending their own confirmation biases while ridiculing anything that doesn’t conform to their point of view.

Occasionally, however, one of these cretins does something that I find sufficiently amusing enough to rouse me from the ennui that their droning ego-masturbatory cries for attention tends to induce in me. And, sure enough, it comes from the king of narcissistic false skepticism, Mr David H. Gorski. Are you in the least bit surprised?

David is blathering about how something offends him…his usual verbal diarrhoea. Today he’s droning on about how he thinks censorship is bad on Facebook, Mkay? Observe:

“My personal issues with Facebook aside, Facebook does indeed have many shortcomings, but until something else comes along and steals the same cachet (which is already happening as teens flee Facebook to avoid their parents) and even after, Facebook will remain a major player in social media. That’s why its policies matter. They can matter a lot. I was reminded of this about a week ago when Dorit Reiss (who has of late been the new favored target of the antivaccine movement, likely because she is a lawyer and has been very effective thus far in her young online career opposing the antivaccine movement) published a post entitled Abusing the Algorithm: Using Facebook Reporting to Censor Debate. Because I also pay attention to some Facebook groups designed to counter the antivaccine movement, I had already heard a little bit about the problem, but Reiss laid it out in stark detail. Basically, the merry band of antivaccinationists at the Australian Vaccination Network (soon to be renamed because its name is so obviously deceptive, given that it is the most prominent antivaccine group in Australia, that the NSW Department of Fair Trading ordered the anti-vaccine group to change its misleading name) has discovered a quirk in the algorithm Facebook uses to process harassment complaints against users and abused that quirk relentlessly to silence its opponents on Facebook.”

David is somewhat correct here; censorship, in any form, is wrong. What he is describing is a form of bullying and harassment, behaviour I find to be childish and appalling.

Except that David thinks that censorship is only bad when false skeptics are censored…it’s ok when they censor opposing views.

This is a theme that I’ve written about numerous times on this site; the hypocritical double standard that false skeptics are free to bully, harass, intimidate and censor any opposing views, but how dare anyone do it back. He can dish it out, but he can’t take it.

This is a common tactic on Facebook for the false skeptics. In fact, there is an entire page devoted to it; they call it the Anti-Vax Wall of Shame (which Gorski happens to be a member of). They make sport of ridiculing parents of vaccine injured children. They congratulate each other for bullying, harassing and intimidating anyone who opposes their point of view, and take great pride in reporting and banning anyone they don’t like. In fact, I’ve found one or two sites devoted to posting the reports and bannings instigated by the AVWOS.

For example, here’s Provax Quacks, who has several posts about bans and reportings from members of the same hate-group that Gorski is a member of.

Just don’t report or ban David’s arse-lickers…that’s bad.

He even goes as far as to tell his fart-sniffers to continue bullying, harassing and censoring opposing views…just don’t tell anyone you’re doing it.

“In other words, carry on what you’re doing, but please, just be a little less blatant about it and for heaven’s sake don’t publicly gloat about it when your abuse of Facebook’s reporting mechanism succeed!”

He later comments and laughs about how the site “FB Time-Outs for Provaxers” is no longer accessible:

“Bwahahahaha. Apparently “Karen Little” either took down her gloating page or changed its privacy settings. The Keanu Reeve meme, in which the tag line was “What if I told you it wasn’t the algorithm,” now does not show up.”

Or, it could be because someone reported the page. Do as I say, not as I do.

What a bloody hypocrite.

I’m not much of a Facebook user. When I do use FB, I make sure my posts are private and that I never comment on any of the Vaccine Zealot or Vaccine Skeptic pages or groups. I might read them, but I never comment. The extreme efforts that others, vaccine zealot and skeptic alike, will go through to silence opposition sickens me. I say let them speak their drivel, but point out their logical fallacies, point out their hypocritical behaviours and actions, and let others see what they are doing. Eventually, people will start to realize that they should not associate with these bullies and zealots and wonder why so many people are turning away from Gorski’s version of Religion-as-Science.

Readers, please feel free to post here times when you’ve been censored, banned, or reported for posting something that wasn’t in line with what vaccine zealots and false skeptics didn’t like.