August 2016
This morning involved my usual routine of sitting on the sofa watching the news with a cup of coffee while my son holds a banana and does his impression of a Minion. It’s little things like this that make it very hard for me to be grumpy these days, hence the lack of angry rants over the past two and a half years. However, my annoyance levels were raised when a rather overweight MP came on the news informing the country that the likes of Facebook, Twitter and Google aren’t doing enough to police extremism on their respective social networks.
Either they are hinting at wanting to take more freedom away from the general public or it once again just highlights what little grip the government has on reality and how little they know about the internet world.
Firstly, I fully acknowledge there is a lot of nasty stuff on social media and there is a very dark side to the internet in general but to suggest that these companies aren’t doing enough is as stupid as this MP’s waistline. For starters, they all remove content that breaches their terms of service, in fact Twitter has deleted hundreds of thousands of accounts this year alone and Facebook and Youtube similarly have taken down countless accounts and content. But they are only able to do this when they are made aware of it and how are they supposed to be made aware of it? Mostly by relying on other users to report it. Sure they have the technology to perform validation on images and flagged keywords but then they run the risk of disabling innocent accounts for accidentally using such words. For example, the words and phrases that are guaranteed to get you kicked off and monitored by the nosey twats at the FBI are:
Assassination
Attack
Dirty Bomb
Militia
Shooting
Hostage
Explosion
Explosive
Hazmat
Nuclear
Chemical Warfare
Virus
Airport
Cocaine
Mexico
Border
Terrorism
Al Qaeda (all spellings)
Terror
Attack
Iraq
Afghanistan
Iran
Pakistan
Jihad
Taliban
Islamist
Plot
So I guarantee this site is now on the FBI watchlist for potential terrorists, even though it’s just a harmless website using phrases like “terrorist”, “explosion” and “bomb airport” just to make a point.
They could monitor all activity on a user’s account and probably even delve into the user’s computer but then the whole world will be up in arms about data protection and violation of privacy. There would be millions of innocent people being watched for no good reason other than some guy called Muhammad plotting to blow up the Empire State building because he’s been jilted by his goat.
The other thing the government think tank (and I use the term “think” sarcastically) fails to comprehend is the sheer amount of content online. There are literally billions of web pages out there and how in the name of Greek buggery is anyone going to police that? Also, a lot of the content is from abroad so it’s really none of the UK’s business. It’s a product of it being a “world wide web” that anyone from any country can access information from the rest of the world.
So, just in case you forgot, the words you should never use on a website are:
Assassination
Attack
Dirty Bomb
Militia
Shooting
Hostage
Explosion
Explosive
Hazmat
Nuclear
Chemical Warfare
Virus
Airport
Cocaine
Mexico
Border
Terrorism
Al Qaeda (all spellings)
Terror
Attack
Iraq
Afghanistan
Iran
Pakistan
Jihad
Taliban
Islamist
Plot
The fact that the internet is being used to promote extremism is irrelevant anyway. If it was possible to ban anyone with a beard and pig spunk round their mouth from accessing the internet (which it isn’t) they would just find another way to spread their delusional hate to other weak-willed individuals. It really doesn’t need some bloated, uneducated politician to point the finger at social media.
So, anyway, one more time:
Assassination
Attack
Dirty Bomb
Militia
Shooting
Hostage
Explosion
Explosive
Hazmat
Nuclear
Chemical Warfare
Virus
Airport
Cocaine
Mexico
Border
Terrorism
Al Qaeda (all spellings)
Terror
Attack
Iraq
Afghanistan
Iran
Pakistan
Jihad
Taliban
Islamist
Plot
