About censorship

 A strange thing happened after I posted the piece on Darko yesterday... Darko asked me if it was okay to post it on his Facebook page and I said yes, certainly, I was very pleased that he would do so.

Then later after many of our friends had seen it on our blog site, he sent this to me:

Hi Peter, just to inform you that the post with your comment on our friendship from your blog cannot be posted on my fb page. At first I managed to post it but after a few hours and several reactions it vanished without explanations and the next retries were blocked instantly... So sorry for this fb malicious act...

Best regards,
Darko

I'm perplexed as to why they would pull it? I know you can ask them for their reasons for doing so, but I won't do that now that I'm out of the game.

This sort of thing has occurred over the entire period I was involved with Facebook, sometimes for things which I considered totally inoffensive but on other occasions I could see why they had done it. It was particularly infuriating because we were a "private group" of mainly sober adults, and we are not the sort of people who go around shooting other people or molesting children or whatever... so I was baffled. And when I had put a lot of work into posting a piece, believe me, often many hours of work, it was terrible to see it just torn down.

David and other close friends know this has been going on since we started Armchair Traveller on FB in September 2019.

Now it is not new, it is a simple form of censorship but in this age it is not a "state regulated" form and not a "church regulated" form, it is censorship administered by an international communication network, a giant which straddles every country wherever any telecommunications might reach.

On a personal level I've mentioned this to David and others, admitting that I have held back from posting some things which were very important for me simply because I could not bear to see them pulled like that. One such work, one of my own films, I would never have posted on facebook. It's available on Youtube and Vimeo, as well as via Artfilms who distribute my films.

Here's a clip from my film "Hey Marcel... "  which I posted on Vimeo many years ago:



I do hope you like it! 


pt












Comments

  1. Bill MousoulisMarch 15, 2021 at 11:24 PM

    And to think the internet started as the place where anyone could post anything, freely ! Slowly, it started being controlled by the "media" (YouTube, Facebook, etc.) where not everything you post will remain there ! And we know about things like the dark web and child pornography, etc, etc. A thing starts off innocent, and then gets corrupted !

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Alexandra KMarch 16, 2021 at 2:48 AM

      Facebook has been an eye opener for me at least. I have been on it since 2007. I can safely say that common sense is definitely not that common. The number of people that have been reposting utter crap is incredible. I have come to appreciate the work of Carlo M. Cipolla "The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity"

      Delete
  2. ptMarch 15, 2021 at 11:26 PM

    Well said Bill, it's an extremely trouble domain.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Alexandra KMarch 16, 2021 at 2:31 AM

    I tried to watch the clip but it comes up with the message "an error occurred please try again later"

    ReplyDelete
  4. ptMarch 16, 2021 at 4:01 AM

    Alexandra, the clip should work, it is in the post, maybe your reception is not strong enough to receive it where you are.
    Here's a vimeo link for you to try:
    https://vimeo.com/93632608
    pt

    ReplyDelete
  5. Darko DuiloMarch 16, 2021 at 8:06 AM

    Thanks for wider observing the situation Peter...

    ReplyDelete
  6. DJKMarch 17, 2021 at 11:40 PM

    Always loved "Hey Marcel", Peter. But it's lucky I only saw it a few years ago. I would have been insanely jealous of you if I had seen it when it was made. Back when we were working on film and sending workprints to labs with mark-ups in grease pencil, that kind of superimposition work was way beyond my meagre financial means. I remember looking at a lab price list (for those of you who weren't there back then, the labs charged so many dollars per foot per effect) and thinking: "I wish...I wish...I wish..." but alas, alack and a-woe, I had to wait until the late nineties brought in non-linear editing systems before I could even begin to THINK about doing such complex visual work. Also, I remember how we never really knew even what any simple effect would actually look like until we got an answer print back from the lab. Even a fade or a dissolve was nerve-racking. What if you wanted to change the length? Bugger! Now we can experiment with effects to our hearts' content without having to spend a cent.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. ptMarch 17, 2021 at 11:46 PM

      Everything you say is correct David, it took a heap of work to edit the film, even though most of the effects in that clip are created "in camera".

      Now it's so easy to do these sort of superimpositions, but it still takes creativity and judgment.

      Delete

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