I went into the city today and met some friends for lunch. We had a long work afterwards around the city. A few days back I had been screenshotting quotes and posting them to social media (Instagram). I found the quotes compelling but I was asked to delete one quote by the platform. Before I had deleted the quote I could no longer post any more content or message friends and as soon as I deleted the quote I could post again.

I posted the quote on my last blog post which could offend people but I was interested in the logic in regard to how people uphold violence and death over sexuality. I am not particularly interested in sexuality generally but did feel the quote was interesting. Today I posted some photos with text I had added to a few photos. Some of the text was deleted as soon as I posted the images. One piece of text was saying new public seating in the city was public housing. 

The reason I said that was to poke fun at the fact local government is more interested in landscaping than solving housing issues. I suppose it isn’t a local government concern but it is sad that so much city landscaping has been made and homeless people use the seats for sleeping on and so little is being done to combat homelessness in the city. I have never been targeted by the censorship algorithms before but I have had my first taste this week. 

I have posted some really nutty stuff over the years and have never been banned or gone against community guidelines on any platform. I did delete all of my socials at one stage and got back on Instagram half a year later to see what mural artists were up to as I sell paint to mural artists. It can be hard to get hold of people otherwise as I found when I had no socials. Mural artists are always on the platform publishing and creating publicity.

I get a lot of creative urges and read widely as well as write quite a lot, most of the ideas I write are half baked but over the years on my blog I have written almost half a million words and managed to use some of that blather to make books. I need to get it wrong as well everything inbetween to keep the ideas flowing but that is why I keep coming back to blogging. I remember when the Obama administration were talking about regulating blogs to stop disinformation and now look where we are.

Instagram is also starting to suggest posts it has curated with music and multiple images from my recent posts. They are editable and are a way Instagram can control your content other than just censoring you. I remember seeing a lot of people who have been banned over the years and are constantly censored and I believe now they will be having an even harder time if someone as moderate as me is being censored as well.

In some ways I have been building up to a book that I want to write which is quite critical and maybe it is starting to show in my socials so I think I had better just write the book and get it out of my system. There is actually a lot I want to write about and some of it I hope will help me understand some of what I have learnt from Feng Shui theory. Especially about the concept of God and Gods in understanding how we navigate a complex world.