In my early rounds this Tuesday morning, I went to Gab to see Julia mainly and there was a notice: UK visitor detected. Whaaaa?
The ephemeral nature of the net just now
Then the screed from Andrew Torba … entire text reproduced below:
ACCESS RESTRICTED BY PROVIDER
After receiving yet another demand from the UK’s speech police, Ofcom, Gab has made the decision to block the entire United Kingdom from accessing our website.
This latest email from Ofcom ordered us to disclose information about our users and operations. We know where this leads: compelled censorship and British citizens thrown in jail for “hate speech.” We refuse to comply with this tyranny.
Gab is an American company with zero presence in the UK. Ofcom’s demands have no legal force here. To enforce anything in the United States, they’d need to go through a Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty request or letters rogatory. No U.S. court is going to enforce a foreign censorship regime. The First Amendment forbids it.
Ofcom will likely try to make an example of us anyway. That’s because the UK’s Online Safety Act isn’t about protecting children. It’s about suppressing dissent.
They’re welcome to try. The idea that a British regulator can pressure a U.S. company that’s IP-blocking the entire UK is as farcical as it is futile. If anything, it proves our point: censorship doesn’t work. It only reveals the truth about the censors.
We proudly join platforms like Bitchute in boycotting the United Kingdom. American companies should follow suit. The power of the UK’s parliament ends where the First Amendment begins.
The only way to vote against the tyranny of the UK’s present regime is to walk away from it, refuse to comply, and take refuge under the impervious shelter of the First Amendment.
The UK’s rulers want their people kept in the dark. Let them see how long the public tolerates it as their Internet vanishes, one website at a time.
I’ve posted this at Unherdables now plus at OoL but shall continue below with details about our sites within the nourishing-unherdable range.
NOWP
This is our grandaddy site … after the now stolen N.O., the 2006 original, this is next oldest … and it is the most stable in terms of longevity … there are other sites running off behind the scenes, it has the original Akismet, plus API code, which is pretty important for more than casual blogging. It’s a vital site and has a fair bit of disk space left.
Orphans
Though this runs off my ggl account, the boss is Julia and together, we bring in a slightly different readership in some ways … mid-to-low traffic but not negligible … and most know it’s the second blog for both of us. Julia and I are also connected on Gab (were) and on X. Orphans is US and runs by ggl rules.
Jstack
Once you know how substack works … basically a platform dedicated to bloggers increasing traffic, plus controlled by Substack HQ, neither which I appreciate, nor do our more unherdable reader commenters, plus there’s its quite amateurish and primitive composing system … you’ll understand why I hardly use it … it’s our second failsafe after NOWP.
UHC
Actually part of the newly restricted free WordPress stable, therefore highly restricted in both disk space and blogging freedom, I had thoughts that it might be more … it’s really only for overflow posts now and then … or commemorative. It would be no use as a full-on HQ and I do not count it as a fallback, failsafe site at this moment.
HQ
More fully Nourishing Unherdables HQ, it’s a fabulous site from a daily working point of view, apart from its primitive theme … for example, it takes seven clicks just to colour one paragraph, rinse and repeat for any other paragraph you want repeated. Indented quote? Forgeddit.
On the other hand, it’s by far the most stable site by a long distance, technically, it works like a dream due to my techie mate but its downside is that though it has massive diskspace in terms of terabytes, plus all sorts of failsafes, backend to frontend, it is (cough) geographically dependent, rather than net dependent. In short, it only works as long as our personal circumstances are idyllic, which they are right now … but in the summer, that changes for me and HQ might disappear just like that. Might.
The upside in one way is that if HQ is snuffed out, ends, so do all the others, as they’re also personal circumstances dependent … sorry to be so cryptic. Whereas anything ggl will go on and on in ghostly form, as will WP. HQ won’t … it physically needs us working it.
DAD’s special request
Some time back, our eldest member asked if he could be posted elsewhere. Er … where? The realistic choice is whether to be the first or uppermost item in each new post, as he has been for the last few posts … or else he opens a new post, as is the case today.
UHC would not be possible because of DAD’s subject matter … he’d be quickly blocked by The Man … the only other place is Jstack and they seem quite censorious too.
I’m thinking that … not just with DAD but with everyone at the tavern … you all must make your own decision where best to post … for example, Macronian EU France comes into the equation for those two boys … our Americans must also decide … Toodles can access Gab, we can’t. I think IYE can’t access Rumble or was that us? Things ain’t easy now, tavern denizens. …/END.
