Time for another episode.

It may seem silly that I’m wearing sunglasses on an overcast, slightly rainy day up here in northeastern Thailand. I’m on the patio of my man-cave perch. This is probably where I’ll end up doing most of the talking videos, as opposed to the walk-around ones.

What do I have today?

This morning I looked at my X account—former Twitter, X—and saw I’d just caught another 30-day ban. Second time. It wasn’t over anything exotic. I watched some normal crap and said something like: this is because parents don’t discipline their children anymore. Spankings and whatnot. If you’re old enough, you probably experienced that sort of punishment. Puppy dogs and children get spankings. It’s been ingrained in human civilization for hundreds, if not thousands, of years.

A company like X comes along and says that’s advocating violence. You’re banned for 30 days.

Unlike Facebook—Facebook calls it “going against community standards,” which is just the most fucktarded sentence you can possibly utter—X calls it “violating our rules.” Fine.

I’m probably one of the record holders for bans on Facebook from the run-up to the 2016 election through the first Trump term and some of the COVID years. Over 30 thirty-day bans. Do the math. I spent at least half my time on Facebook in what they called Facebook jail. I deleted the account in 2021. Re-engaged within the last couple of years. A few months back they deleted me summarily. No recourse.

I’m just a dude out here homesteading in Thailand, putting four thousand bucks a month into the local Thai community building out my place. According to Facebook and X I’m a very, very bad person because I speak my mind. Zuckerberg and Elon Musk can go fuck themselves. I speak my mind. Do what you want.

Here’s the difference. Facebook was a free account. They can do what they want. X I paid seven or eight bucks a month since Elon bought the place. That makes me a customer. A paying customer. It’s not a lot of money. It’s not about the money. It is about a principle when I’m paying.

I just had a long, honest conversation with Grok about this whole thing. Quite remarkable. Grok is an X product, but it was completely honest and objective. Pleasantly surprised. It took my side in a sense, then explained: it’s not really criminal fraud because you’re a paying customer and they’re withholding the services you pay for for 30 days. It’s the terms of service you agreed to.

You pay once a month. After you pay, if you violate their terms of service they can withhold all your services. No refund. You can cancel anytime you want, but that doesn’t happen until the next billing cycle. This is a 30-day ban. Effectively a month where I do not get the services I pay for. They’re denying them to me.

Suppose you go into a coffee shop or restaurant. There’s this big lawyerly thing that fills the whole door. That’s their terms of service. By entering you agree. You go up to the counter, order coffee and food, pay for it. Then a customer is annoying you so you tell them to fuck off. They say you violated our rules. They keep your money and do not give you the coffee or the meal you paid for.

That is exactly what X does. Precisely. Grok agreed.

It’s not criminal only because, with the act of subscribing—or walking in the door in my analogy—you accepted their terms of service. But their terms of service are smarmy weasel lawyerly bullshit. It is not what a man does. I don’t care about the few bucks. You’re just not doing things correctly.

Let me give you one experience from way back. 1993. Email lists. This guy—quite well known in Ayn Rand / Objectivist circles; I can’t remember his name—maintained a list. Back then you didn’t have automatic billing. You mailed him a check. Something like twelve bucks for the year. I was a member.

I very much appreciate Ayn Rand and Objectivism. I’ve read everything. I also think on my own, so I come up sometimes with something different from what she wrote down. There are very many Objectivists who cannot take that. Very similar to religion. Many people cannot take it if you disagree with something in the Bible. Same sort of thing.

After I pushed back a little over time, the owner of the list decided he didn’t want me around anymore. He canceled my subscription. What did he do as an honest man? He sent me a check for whatever the remaining value was. Six or seven bucks. Inconsequential in terms of the money. What it demonstrates is honesty and forthrightness and proper business dealing versus what Elon Musk does, which is completely dishonest. Terms-of-service capture. Let’s call it that.

Nobody reads that shit. Nobody has the time to read that shit. By accepting the deal, that’s what you get. You say something we don’t like after you paid your monthly eight bucks, then we deny all further service to you and there is no refund. That’s what Elon Musk does.

That being said, I love Elon. What he does every place else—SpaceX, the robotics, Tesla, the Boring Company, Neuralink, Starlink—I love it. I celebrate him. I do not like X. I think he’s going down a wrong path with this.

What X needs to do now, since the mainstream media is collapsing all over the world: X needs to say we are the news platform. Hire actual reporters. Investigative reporters. Live video from locations all over the world, actually reporting news like news companies used to do. I don’t know how they monetize it. They have a big problem with advertisers because the corporate world is still a bunch of woke dumbshits. That’s going to be a problem. I don’t know if they can monetize it on subscriptions alone. I’m hopeful for them.

What they’re doing to people like me who are just speaking out a little bit is really fucking dumb, Elon. Really fucking dumb.

Here’s another fact: there is no recourse. You’re a paying subscriber and you cannot talk to a person about their decision. It’s all algorithmic. All of it. That too is fucking evil. If someone’s not paying you, block them. Okay, fine. Free account. You don’t need to talk to them. Someone’s paying you money, you better at least give them the opportunity to get somebody on the phone, or an email conversation, or chat. Something. X affords nothing like that.

Over and out. Don’t want to rant on too long.