barnbwt
member
- Joined
- Aug 14, 2011
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Mods: This is for sure and for certain a plan of action in defense of gun owner advocacy, before you go closing this immediately.
The Problem:
The modern gun culture responsible for our success in recent years is almost entirely due to content-sharing on the internet (the rest is video games). Content-suppliers are now openly conspiring against the proliferation of pro-gun, and even generally gun-related media. As centralized as the internet media complex has become (Youtube/Google, Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram), and as hostile toward firearms as the people who run these companies from Silicon Valley are, they will succeed in crushing the modern gun culture before we can react if we do not seek out alternative means of sustaining ourselves. They have made their intentions known.
The Situation:
In recent months, a number of these large media outlets like Twitter and Youtube have begun broadening their definitions of 'offensive content' to include things that they (the employees and managers of these generally urban-Californian corporations) disagree with politically. Things that make them angry or upset, for example. Like seeing guns that should be banned and are banned in CA being used freely by people in other states. Given the range of other offensive content (war footage, gruesome injuries, militant groups advocating violence) that is not only tolerated but celebrated, the double standard is so stark and obvious there can be no doubt that there are good intentions at play.
It seems the anti-gun folks finally learned their lesson, and stopped focusing on the guns, and now we have a real problem on our hands. They have completely lost their fear of the NRA at last after their waffling in Vegas and Florida, and are attacking the gun culture (i.e. gun owners) directly from multiple avenues that completely bypass our governmental protections.
The Solution:
Stop watching Youtube. That's it. Simple, right?
Wrong. Remember, internet media access is the air the modern gun culture breathes, and without it we will die out rapidly into a bunch of isolated Dale Gribbles fondling guns in the basement as they are banned out from under us before the word even gets out (basically pre-1994 Assault Weapons Ban).
We have to be strategic in our next moves, or we will be driven from these remaining public avenues of discussion and coordination before we can regroup, and at that point we are defenseless to the sorts of betrayals that even now are being attempted in DC (today's big spending bill had a litany of gun-control items tossed into it shortly before passing the House, for no logicial reason and in exchange for no benefit to gun owners). What follows is broadly technical, at least for folks who are very unfamiliar with how websites or the internet work. It's important to understand these basics, though, if we want to insulate ourselves from this anti-gun hijacking of the internet we're seeing.
-Step One: Identify Our Resources & Their Reliablility
From the perspective of gun owners, this means take stock of which services you use to view 'gun stuff' and talk to 'gun people.' The forum, for example. Is it pro-gun? Does it have rules banning the discussion of lawful gun-related topics because of political stances? Is it owned or operated by people who are known to be very hostile to gun rights, and are willing to lose money harming us?
The High Road is known to be generally very open to discussing almost any gun-related topic that isn't outright illegal, and what censorship is present here generally arises because the primary goal is keeping discussion civil (even if more energetic discussions are sometimes appropriate or necessary). Neither of these is a barrier to our continued freeloading posting here as members, so the site is likely okay for now
. Knowing more about the ownership & web services THR uses would make me feel even more secure basing my social-media presence here.
A website like Google Groups, on the other hand... Well, Google has just come out and said they will not tolerate any video promoting the sale of guns, or even the use of assault doohickeys. Now, that puts a major damper on discussions, and more importantly, is indicative of a site-management culture opposed to firearms, that is also ready-willing-and-able to shut down users to promote that ideal. Big strike one. Political donation tracking websites have documented that Google overwhelmingly donates to anti-gun politicians, so that's another strike. Three, corroborated stories of collusion with anti-gun political parties and fiddling with search results to promote anti-gun web pages. Strike three. If you are a current user, take note of the hostile territory, and seek out alternatives, and work to bring your circle of peeps along with you. In the long run it's a better end than walking on increasingly thin eggshells until you are banned for liking guns too much. Probably not a good idea to build your gun culture on such untrustworthy ground.
Speaking of 'solid ground,' the 'guts' of the web portal that is seen by mods, developers, and site owners is just as critical. Just last year Google unilaterally shut down & deleted a controversial neo-Nazi site for similar "it's politically offensive to everyone" reasoning, even though they had no legal right to do so. "First they came for the Nazis, but I was not a Nazi" and all that.
Google was essentially acting as 'land lord' for the site, leasing them a "domain" (the 'XXXXX.com' core address), which they unilaterally revoked without notice or compensation --essentially burning down the rent-house with the tenants' belongings still in it-- based upon a novel reading of their terms of use agreement that had never been enforced with such severity before, and again, without warning. Well, unless you count the vitriol hurled at the site from politically-linked hardliners for years beforehand...similar to what we are starting to see expressed toward gun owners at large by the very same folks today.
It's essential that the portals we conduct our Gun Culture in are leased from (ideally) objective overseers who would not be expected to do something so drastic. Second to this is ensuring the same objective or supportive working relationship exists with the server companies that own the hardware 'hosting' all the content we users enjoy. Even better is owning the actual hardware, but depending on the business model of the portal this may be impractical. The last thing we'd want is all the data we've ever posted or uploaded being held hostage by a holding company, and threatened with deletion if we don't dance to their anti-gun tune. When Photobucket suddenly blocked almost every user's images from displaying outside their website last year, an incalculable number of gun forum posts suddenly became worthless. Worse yet, for at least some period of time (perhaps still) the site blocked them from even downloading their own images so they could be copied to other services that were still willing to display them on third-party sites. The combination of permissive hosting rules and hardware capability is what spawned the much-talked-about collaboration between InRangeTV of Full30.com (a small but growing host service) and PornHub of all things (a massive and well-established video hosting platform that specializes in pornography, but is also willing & able to carry/stream more obscure run & gun videos than Ian & Karl could ever produce, and without the threat of termination)
So with the homestead secured (the domain & the data storage) next is the house itself; the website. Is your website produced or maintained by an anti-gun company or employees? Would they refuse to let you renew a use or service contract, or even sabotage your site for political reasons? Is the same true of the software they are using to develop the site? If Google can ban Youtubers for posting bump fire videos, they will darn sure refuse to offer web services to "bumpfire.com," and likely soon.
At this point the concern is management & membership for the site. I would argue that if a site owner & webmaster have been diligent enough to take care of these previous basics, they probably don't need to worry about the stuff downstream, or they will notice if it's going off the rails. "Take care of your pennies, and your dollars will take care of themselves"
-Step Two: Reallocate our Resources
Knowing your landlord hates you isn't enough to keep from being evicted, obviously. We have to do what is necessary, and extricate ourselves from toxic, abusive relationships with our partners, I mean, our business partners
Individual users; set your browser to block the Youtube domain completely. If you want to see something and a search result chases up a youtube link that's the only source, contact the poster and ask them to relocate their stash to friendly territory before it is deleted. If the content is ancient and dormant, download it using keepvid or similar to your machine, and post it someplace public where it will be safe for posterity; the original poster probably appreciates it, wherever they are (and if they don't, they'll politely but firmly ask you to take it down; no biggie)
This same approach can work for Facebook/etc as well, but is more difficult since there are not as many even passable alternatives as there are for simple video hosting. I would recommend looking into several alternatives, choosing one that seems the best, and gradually moving your activities there as you convince friends to join you. If your friends find better success putting down roots in some other social media platform, move over to it; this is the one game where bunching up is the only strategy.
For site owners & developers, be diligent and use friendly or ambivalent service providers. The risk and drama presented by this brave new hostile internet are simply not worth some minor cost-savings or personal preference. For store owners, making sure the back-end outfit handling the flow of web-store money securely is a friendly business partner is hugely critical. When choosing ad companies, select those that don't have a history of dumping customers without notice because of politics or scandal, and who don't cater to known anti-gun demographics. It'd be cool if Washington Post Op-Ed fans would learn more about guns, but it's far more likely they will turn on us and threaten to withhold ad sponsorship after some fiasco.
"The Net sees censorship as damage and routes around it" --John Gilmore
From my incredibly basic understanding of web platforms, this *seems* like it covers the most basic of the bases, but of course there is always more to it. I think the major thing is we need to adopt the 'paranoid' mindset of being mindful of whom we deal with if we identify ourselves as the vanguard of the Gun Culture. Instead of being naiive and trusting of our business partners to deal with us fairly, and not conspire against us for political reasons, which has worked for the past decade or two.
Maybe this older, wiser, more strategically-minded mindset toward common interest will be called Gun Culture 3.0 (or 2.1, or however we want to term it)
The Problem:
The modern gun culture responsible for our success in recent years is almost entirely due to content-sharing on the internet (the rest is video games). Content-suppliers are now openly conspiring against the proliferation of pro-gun, and even generally gun-related media. As centralized as the internet media complex has become (Youtube/Google, Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram), and as hostile toward firearms as the people who run these companies from Silicon Valley are, they will succeed in crushing the modern gun culture before we can react if we do not seek out alternative means of sustaining ourselves. They have made their intentions known.
The Situation:
In recent months, a number of these large media outlets like Twitter and Youtube have begun broadening their definitions of 'offensive content' to include things that they (the employees and managers of these generally urban-Californian corporations) disagree with politically. Things that make them angry or upset, for example. Like seeing guns that should be banned and are banned in CA being used freely by people in other states. Given the range of other offensive content (war footage, gruesome injuries, militant groups advocating violence) that is not only tolerated but celebrated, the double standard is so stark and obvious there can be no doubt that there are good intentions at play.
It seems the anti-gun folks finally learned their lesson, and stopped focusing on the guns, and now we have a real problem on our hands. They have completely lost their fear of the NRA at last after their waffling in Vegas and Florida, and are attacking the gun culture (i.e. gun owners) directly from multiple avenues that completely bypass our governmental protections.
The Solution:
Stop watching Youtube. That's it. Simple, right?
Wrong. Remember, internet media access is the air the modern gun culture breathes, and without it we will die out rapidly into a bunch of isolated Dale Gribbles fondling guns in the basement as they are banned out from under us before the word even gets out (basically pre-1994 Assault Weapons Ban).
We have to be strategic in our next moves, or we will be driven from these remaining public avenues of discussion and coordination before we can regroup, and at that point we are defenseless to the sorts of betrayals that even now are being attempted in DC (today's big spending bill had a litany of gun-control items tossed into it shortly before passing the House, for no logicial reason and in exchange for no benefit to gun owners). What follows is broadly technical, at least for folks who are very unfamiliar with how websites or the internet work. It's important to understand these basics, though, if we want to insulate ourselves from this anti-gun hijacking of the internet we're seeing.
-Step One: Identify Our Resources & Their Reliablility
From the perspective of gun owners, this means take stock of which services you use to view 'gun stuff' and talk to 'gun people.' The forum, for example. Is it pro-gun? Does it have rules banning the discussion of lawful gun-related topics because of political stances? Is it owned or operated by people who are known to be very hostile to gun rights, and are willing to lose money harming us?
The High Road is known to be generally very open to discussing almost any gun-related topic that isn't outright illegal, and what censorship is present here generally arises because the primary goal is keeping discussion civil (even if more energetic discussions are sometimes appropriate or necessary). Neither of these is a barrier to our continued freeloading posting here as members, so the site is likely okay for now
. Knowing more about the ownership & web services THR uses would make me feel even more secure basing my social-media presence here.A website like Google Groups, on the other hand... Well, Google has just come out and said they will not tolerate any video promoting the sale of guns, or even the use of assault doohickeys. Now, that puts a major damper on discussions, and more importantly, is indicative of a site-management culture opposed to firearms, that is also ready-willing-and-able to shut down users to promote that ideal. Big strike one. Political donation tracking websites have documented that Google overwhelmingly donates to anti-gun politicians, so that's another strike. Three, corroborated stories of collusion with anti-gun political parties and fiddling with search results to promote anti-gun web pages. Strike three. If you are a current user, take note of the hostile territory, and seek out alternatives, and work to bring your circle of peeps along with you. In the long run it's a better end than walking on increasingly thin eggshells until you are banned for liking guns too much. Probably not a good idea to build your gun culture on such untrustworthy ground.
Speaking of 'solid ground,' the 'guts' of the web portal that is seen by mods, developers, and site owners is just as critical. Just last year Google unilaterally shut down & deleted a controversial neo-Nazi site for similar "it's politically offensive to everyone" reasoning, even though they had no legal right to do so. "First they came for the Nazis, but I was not a Nazi" and all that.
Google was essentially acting as 'land lord' for the site, leasing them a "domain" (the 'XXXXX.com' core address), which they unilaterally revoked without notice or compensation --essentially burning down the rent-house with the tenants' belongings still in it-- based upon a novel reading of their terms of use agreement that had never been enforced with such severity before, and again, without warning. Well, unless you count the vitriol hurled at the site from politically-linked hardliners for years beforehand...similar to what we are starting to see expressed toward gun owners at large by the very same folks today.
It's essential that the portals we conduct our Gun Culture in are leased from (ideally) objective overseers who would not be expected to do something so drastic. Second to this is ensuring the same objective or supportive working relationship exists with the server companies that own the hardware 'hosting' all the content we users enjoy. Even better is owning the actual hardware, but depending on the business model of the portal this may be impractical. The last thing we'd want is all the data we've ever posted or uploaded being held hostage by a holding company, and threatened with deletion if we don't dance to their anti-gun tune. When Photobucket suddenly blocked almost every user's images from displaying outside their website last year, an incalculable number of gun forum posts suddenly became worthless. Worse yet, for at least some period of time (perhaps still) the site blocked them from even downloading their own images so they could be copied to other services that were still willing to display them on third-party sites. The combination of permissive hosting rules and hardware capability is what spawned the much-talked-about collaboration between InRangeTV of Full30.com (a small but growing host service) and PornHub of all things (a massive and well-established video hosting platform that specializes in pornography, but is also willing & able to carry/stream more obscure run & gun videos than Ian & Karl could ever produce, and without the threat of termination)
So with the homestead secured (the domain & the data storage) next is the house itself; the website. Is your website produced or maintained by an anti-gun company or employees? Would they refuse to let you renew a use or service contract, or even sabotage your site for political reasons? Is the same true of the software they are using to develop the site? If Google can ban Youtubers for posting bump fire videos, they will darn sure refuse to offer web services to "bumpfire.com," and likely soon.
At this point the concern is management & membership for the site. I would argue that if a site owner & webmaster have been diligent enough to take care of these previous basics, they probably don't need to worry about the stuff downstream, or they will notice if it's going off the rails. "Take care of your pennies, and your dollars will take care of themselves"
-Step Two: Reallocate our Resources
Knowing your landlord hates you isn't enough to keep from being evicted, obviously. We have to do what is necessary, and extricate ourselves from toxic, abusive relationships with our partners, I mean, our business partners
Individual users; set your browser to block the Youtube domain completely. If you want to see something and a search result chases up a youtube link that's the only source, contact the poster and ask them to relocate their stash to friendly territory before it is deleted. If the content is ancient and dormant, download it using keepvid or similar to your machine, and post it someplace public where it will be safe for posterity; the original poster probably appreciates it, wherever they are (and if they don't, they'll politely but firmly ask you to take it down; no biggie)
This same approach can work for Facebook/etc as well, but is more difficult since there are not as many even passable alternatives as there are for simple video hosting. I would recommend looking into several alternatives, choosing one that seems the best, and gradually moving your activities there as you convince friends to join you. If your friends find better success putting down roots in some other social media platform, move over to it; this is the one game where bunching up is the only strategy.
For site owners & developers, be diligent and use friendly or ambivalent service providers. The risk and drama presented by this brave new hostile internet are simply not worth some minor cost-savings or personal preference. For store owners, making sure the back-end outfit handling the flow of web-store money securely is a friendly business partner is hugely critical. When choosing ad companies, select those that don't have a history of dumping customers without notice because of politics or scandal, and who don't cater to known anti-gun demographics. It'd be cool if Washington Post Op-Ed fans would learn more about guns, but it's far more likely they will turn on us and threaten to withhold ad sponsorship after some fiasco.
"The Net sees censorship as damage and routes around it" --John Gilmore
From my incredibly basic understanding of web platforms, this *seems* like it covers the most basic of the bases, but of course there is always more to it. I think the major thing is we need to adopt the 'paranoid' mindset of being mindful of whom we deal with if we identify ourselves as the vanguard of the Gun Culture. Instead of being naiive and trusting of our business partners to deal with us fairly, and not conspire against us for political reasons, which has worked for the past decade or two.
Maybe this older, wiser, more strategically-minded mindset toward common interest will be called Gun Culture 3.0 (or 2.1, or however we want to term it)
NOT'' crowd
