Spam! Ban! Thank you, Man!

My last blog post, entitled “The Tao of Glitches,” prompted a glitch of its own. At least I think it was a glitch. No sooner had I published my first post on Substack, and it was quickly banned from Facebook. Was it a glitch or something more?

I shared a link to the post on my Facebook page, and I soon received a notification telling me that it was removed because it violated Facebook’s ”Community Standards on spam.“ I immediately appealed the ruling. Facebook replied by saying that a bot might be adjudicating the appeal. So I will not get my hopes up for a fair resolution of the issue.

I had heard that Facebook has changed, but I was not sure how. Now I am starting to understand. Last month Mark Zuckerberg announced that Meta was scaling back its content moderation regime to curb its own “censorship.” I foolishly thought that would mean freer speech. Apparently it just means less oversight. That means that anyone who does not like my content can report it as “spam,” and it is immediately taken off Facebook. Ban now, ask questions later.

It makes me wonder who reported my post and why. I have made my share of enemies during my ministry. That number has grown as I publicly deconstructed my evangelical faith and started a podcast and YouTube channel, which are decided heterodox. So the culprit may have been a disgruntled Christian waging war against heresy.

But it could have been someone else. In the article I mentioned the incompetence of FedEx, so perhaps it was them. I also made an offhand reference to the Commander-in-Chief as Il Duce. So it might have been a MAGAtte who turned me in.

In the post I talked about my reasons for moving to Substack and my dissatisfaction with the previous blog service. So perhaps it was them. Or the manufacturers of the security cams I mentioned. Or any of the other products and services that I mentioned. Come to think if it, there are a lot of people who would not like that post!

The whole experience reminds me of Nazi sympathizers turning in their neighbors in the Resistance during WWII or communist party members in the Soviet bloc turning in their neighbors for disloyalty to the party.

It makes me wonder if I should be more careful in what I say. Things seem to be getting very dodgy very quickly. On second thought - No, I can’t stop speaking my conscience. That is what got us into this mess in our country. Republican lawmakers afraid to speak or vote against The Don.

Then again, this issue with Facebook might have been just a glitch. After all, I am a nobody living in Nowhereland and not a threat to anyone. Perhaps no one reported my post as spam with an intention to suppress it. Maybe I am being paranoid. Perhaps I simply ran afoul of some mindless algorithm or AI. Of course, that conjures up all sorts of dystopian AI scenarios. It does not help that tech billionaires are lining up behind The Don to get their share of the wealth from his new Golden Age.

I will end this post with a spiritual twist. Perhaps all these thoughts are the conjecture of my monkey mind, inflating the ego and leading me away from resting in the Divine Reality that I call God. In any case I will trust the words of Jesus. “Servants are not greater than their master. If people treated me badly, they will treat you badly too.”

I expect that things will get worse much in our country before they get better. Religious freedom is already being curtailed in the name of national security. Followers of the Crucified One can expect a cross at the hands of the Christian Taliban.

So I will just go on writing and speaking and getting banned and being labeled spam. I will wear the badge of spam proudly. After all it is the premier canned meat beloved in many countries and at least one US state: Hawaii! Aloha!