2020-2021 Forced Me to Make a Lot of Choices!

 

2020-2021 Forced Me to Make a Lot of Choices!

Al Ritter

Informed choices are based on lots of things, many things last year were based on mandates and health choices and issues, one of which I outlined here.

I think everyone has some health related situation borne out of Covid though, so I won’t dwell on that either.

I made a few choices based on a multitude of reasons and a few have dealt with media specifically. Social Media was my biggest concern and how the Big Tech Giants had invaded my life. Certainly the actions that I have taken haven’t removed my footprint entirely but they have significantly cut it way back.

2020-2021 has seen me remove my accounts on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. I also cleaned Google from my cell phone. I also changed cell carriers from AT&T to Consumer Cellular. The reason for switching carriers is that AT&T was making political statements that troubled me. This is an all too common problem now with companies taking a political stance, why do they feel the need along with athletes and public figures not related to politics to voice their opinions?

In doing so they are alienating half their audience, why would anyone do that? When I was in business you couldn’t pry a political opinion out of me with a crowbar! I didn’t start writing about politics until I was retired.

I also “Cut the Cable” just last week because of same issues I mentioned already and Verizon Fios was no different than any other right wing organization. Their continual raise in monthly fees and taxes convinced me to search elsewhere for entertainment.

Another change I made was search engines, once I flushed Google from my cell phone I needed to replace Chrome, so I went with DuckDuck Go, I know that there are no truly clean browsers but DuckDuck Go when hooked up with my VPN from Norton gives me far more protection.

I also when through my cell phone apps and anything connected to daily monitoring I deleted. These things include health monitoring that run all the time in the back ground, specifically location monitoring. Facebook app was one of those things, even though I had Google location turned off on my phone Facebook could still see my location through their app. Another thing is anything that monitors your health, blood pressure, diabetes, even step counters!

I deleted them all, now that’s not to say I haven’t lost a lot of things because of my choices. I’ve lost of course Google Maps and their direction service, I’ve lost voice to text and a few other things I never thought were part of Google but at least I have some of my privacy back!

The next thing is social media. This can be a two edged sword for sure! I was a Facebook JUNKIE! I was on there for usually 12-14 hours a day. I drew down my account first from 5000 likeminded friends, cancelled that account then came back under another name and proceeded to “Like” only people I know in real life. Then the Censorship started! Declaring things were “misinformation” was just the start of Mark Zuckerberg’s downward spiral in my eyes. The one morning a video had popped up on my suggested videos to watch. It was Teen Porn as outlined here. The lead in picture was so disturbing that this blogsite had actually blocked it! Many people reported it only to have them come back and say it didn’t violate their community standards. That was it, the final straw! I was gone that very day from Facebook and Mr. Zuckerberg’s overbearing personality. It was tough at first not going on there so I searched for another Social Site and ended up on the Parler fiasco! It was doomed from the start claiming no censorship but finally they took a knee and submitted to censorship at the demand of Apple Cloud services to install a censorship algorithm first designed by non-other than Mark Zuckerberg himself. Dan Bongino sold be a bill of goods that was dishonest to say the least, and I’ll never trust or follow him anymore.

Finally for the light at the end of the tunnel which isn’t a train…..lol. Gab.com is well run, they own their own servers so they aren’t at the mercy of any of the Big Tech guys, and they don’t censor ANYTHING! Now that doesn’t mean that you don’t see anything offensive, quite the contrary you see a lot, but just like Facebook you block those people who spew it. Every feature works on Gab.com unlike Parler and to some extent Facebook too.

Andrew Torba is the owner of Gab.com and he’s been at this 5 years so far, and surprisingly enough has so far funded his entire operation on donations! He is exploring using ads for the first time in the near future. His team is small unlike Facebook but they are proficient and dedicated to his cause. I highly recommend Gab.com, the layout is very similar to Facebook and very user friendly.

My choices for this year have included joining Gab and I’m glad I did…..finally freedom of speech the way the Constitution intended it! 18 million visits per day and 10,000 new users per hour!

 

Join here:

Gab.com