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Guest Column

Twitter keeps many secrets

Ilove Twitter.

I love it because when I joined, I “followed” people so I get to learn what they think. I also learn what the crowd thinks and sometimes I get breaking news. Hooray for Twitter.

I also hate Twitter. After I read my Twitter feed, I often JohN SToSSEL feel disgusted with myself. Social media algorithms cleverly show me more of what gets me engaged, what I look at a moment longer. That often includes posts that make me angry. So they send me more of those. Fights. Sarcasm. Snarky putdowns. When I stop reading, I feel sad and anxious.

For those of you not familiar with social media feeds: We “follow” people on Twitter, “friend” them on Facebook, etc. Customers think the companies show us all our friends’ posts, but they don’t. (We wouldn’t like it if they did.) Twitter features only some posts from people I follow, mixed with posts from people who pay, some who might anger me, popular people and ... well, I don’t know; they keep that secret.

I post a new Stossel TV video every Tuesday. Lots of people signed up to receive them, but Twitter won’t send my Twitter is a tweets to most of them. private company A million people chose to follow me on Twitter, and can do but Twitter shows my whatever it wants. posts to only 5 or 10% of them. Which ones? I don’t But I wish the rules were applied know. That’s secret. consistently. I I will post a link to this column, too. Ninety can’t know if they percent of my followers are. The process won’t see it. Twitter will bury most is secret. of my tweets deep in my followers’ newsfeeds, below paid tweets, below “trending” tweets, below ... who knows what? They bury them so deep that most people never see them.

Do they bury them because some employee doesn’t like me? Doesn’t like libertarians? I don’t know. The algorithm is secret.

Twitter is a private company and can do whatever it wants. But I wish the rules were applied consistently. I can’t know if they are. The process is secret.

Twitter does carry plenty of posts from libertarians and conservatives. But their “content moderators” favor the left.

Just weeks before the last election, the New York Post reported, accurately, on the sleaze on Hunter Biden’s computer. Twitter blocked the Post’s account for two weeks. Twitter’s CEO later called that “a mistake.” But did Twitter change? We don’t know.

Twitter blocks former President Donald Trump, but the Taliban’s account is open.

Now Twitter’s blocking some posts that criticize government’s COVID policies.

How often? We don’t know.

Enough people on the right have been Twitterbanned that several sites have sprung to welcome

n See StoSSel, page A5

Letters to the Editor

Crossword

EDITOR:

Just a short note to say thank you for acting on a request to make the font and print of the Crossword bigger so old guys like me with poor eyesight can read it easier. Sadly the larger font has not improved my ability to complete it though.

LEE HOLIFIELD Camino

Action needed

EDITOR:

Acouple months ago I sent a letter about all the bushes and trees that were growing in the creek that goes through downtown Placerville. And since then, I have seen no change in the trees or brush.

Oct. 3 there was a letter from Theresa Storlie about the same subject. What is it going to take to get some action going to protect our town?

We certainly don’t want Old Hangtown to go up in flames.

KAREN CLEVELAND Camino

Promotion of crime

EDITOR:

These days crime is rampant from coast to coast — zero bail, DAs who don’t charge criminals. People in the major Democratrun cities are being victimized, assaulted, killed, blindsided just walking on a sidewalk.

Here in California we released thousands of violent felons by not telling the voting public that only their last crime was considered in determining whether they were violent and armed parolees caught with guns and ammo were being released after just 10 day timeouts in jail.

A good analogy is the farm with the crops as the criminals. The Democrats as farmers plant the seeds of crime and the innocent reap the harvest. GEORGE ALGER Placerville

This should be an easy test

EDITOR:

I’ve made an easy multiple choice quiz that should answer this lingering question about Trump and him going to prison. It’s quite simple; you can only pick one:

A. After some seven-plus years Trump must be a super villain to avoid jail all this time.

B. The justice system must be beyond incompetent if after seven-plus years it still can’t put him in jail.

C. The Democratic Party was so embarrassed by the first loss that it will do what ever it takes to get even with him. That includes lying, making false accusations to paint him as the Antichrist, using the state police and FBI to go after political rivals and so on.

Might I point out the way Biden is using the FBI reminds me of a certain World War II country that did the same thing when it came to power.

How long are you going to go along with this?

It should bother any sane person that this goes on and on with no results.

ERIC KRAUSS Cameron Park

Indisputable facts

EDITOR:

The California Democratic Party has waged a single-handed war against U.S. energy and mining. Its members have run a campaign (claiming) that by destroying our industries that manage U.S. natural resources the world will be a cleaner and safer place.

On the surface, how can anyone argue that battery-operated electric vehicles (EVs) are not clean and safe, right? Especially if you see that the California Democrats plan is to use solar to charge our vehicles. Anyone who disputes their strategy is branded an ignorant heretic.

EVs need cobalt to fuel their batteries and 70% of all the cobalt mining in the world comes from the Republic of the Congo. These mines owned by the Chinese Communist Party are some of the most deadly and polluted places on the planet. The Chinese use child labor to mine the cobalt by hand. The pollution from these mine fields leaches into the great Congo River and has destroyed the fish and made one of the greatest sources of fresh water on this planet unsafe to drink.

What I am telling you is fact. The question is: just how much influence does the Chinese Communist Party have on the California Democratic Party?

Both are responsible for raping Africa’s natural resources and causing long-term, physical harm to the people of Africa. This is a fact that can’t be

n See letterS, page A5

The Not So Weekly Daley

T’is the dark, dreary season ... blah, blah, blah

I’ve mentioned a time or two over the years that I suffer from Seasonal Affective Disorder. It’s that time now. Typically, it starts around the middle of August when I notice a change in sunlight and shadows. A couple degrees of cooling during the day confirms that other major changes are on the way.

Admittedly, 85 beats the heck out of 102 for a day‘s high temperature. And one could relish the relief inherent in that change. Yet we “SAD Sacks” can’t appreciate a welcome cooling trend because we are hard wired to mostly see cold, dark days and even colder, darker nights just ahead.

As a retired guy, SAD isn’t as sad as it was when I was a worker bee. As a worker, I had to get up every

morning in the feeble light of dawn when all I could think of was pulling the covers back over my head and sleeping four or five more hours. And it didn’t depend on how much I liked or disliked whatever my job was at the time. I ChrIS DALEy mostly liked my jobs, not counting trying to teach U.S. history to eighth-graders. SAD greatly exacerbated that experience and vice versa. For me, SAD doesn’t automatically indicate that I’m actually “sad” in its traditional sense. It’s more like unmotivated, disinterested, not energy-depleted exactly, rather just a “system-wide” absence of energy and no interest in changing that reality. I remember foggy, drizzly mornings when I literally had to convince myself that getting fired

I mostly liked my jobs, not counting trying to teach U.S. history to eighth-graders. SAD greatly exacerbated that experience and vice versa.

would not be an acceptable response for my employer to take — as long as I could go back to sleep for a “while.” Not all day. That would just be crazy. All I really needed was not to feel compelled to get out of bed and go to work while it’s still foggy or drizzly and dark outside. Is that too much to ask of life and the universe once in a while? Like how about “today!”

The holiday season tends to alleviate some of my SAD symptoms. That’s probably why they invented a fall-winter holiday season. I don’t need those distracting events in April or May or June. Halloween through New Year’s is when we need the cozy togetherness of family and friends around the Thanksgiving table, the Christmas tree or Yule log, the horn-tooting and stranger-hugging that welcomes in a new year. Suddenly, and almost mysteriously, hope is in the air.

Spring is around the corner then. The light and shadows are different from what they have been since mid-August. Baseball starts soon. Politics is at a bit of a hiatus while the taste of fresh, ripe peaches and tomatoes is now much more than the dim memory that arrived back in mid-October.

Assuming the sorrow and tragedies that befall most of us at times may already be on the horizon, let’s pull together to get all of us over what’s just another SAD season. No more, no less. Am I right?

Chris Daley is a biweekly columnist for the Mountain Democrat.