Notes Note

(and Some Observations on the Fake "Social Media" Platform Called X)

This just a note, in effect, to encourage my readers to use Substack Notes. I would be curious to know how many of you do. X has become a veritable nightmare, and it is very obvious that my visibility is severely restricted there.

Occasionally, some visibility filter or another that has been placed on my account will be removed and then, all of a sudden, there will be a flood of engagement from non-followers (some of the whom will presumably then become followers or at least try to). But most of the time, engagement is limited to followers and tagged accounts in a thread or convo. This is particularly striking in the case of reply-posts, which typically get no engagement other than from the person to whom I’m replying — as if we were direct messaging.

The whole interest of Twitter, prior to the development of the visibility filtering algorithm, was that it broke down the distinction between private and public. It meant that our private conversations could be public if we so wished. We didn’t have to wait to publish an article. We could just publish a passing thought.

But the X algorithm has essentially driven me and other unapproved accounts back into the private sphere. My passing thoughts can no longer have public impact, no matter how germane they are. They can’t strike a chord — like the below tweet did in January 2022 — because hardly anyone is seeing them and/or the algo is preventing engagement with them so that they don’t “go viral” or even gain any traction at all.

The above immediately started going viral and only stopped because the author of the tweet to which I was replying deleted the tweet. She had said something to the effect that UK authorities should advise people not to exercise for two weeks after getting a COVID-19 vaccine as the highly responsible German authorities did. At the time, I probably only had a couple of dozen followers. It didn’t matter. The platform was not ranking accounts and their replies, deciding who gets promoted and who gets demoted, who gets seen and who does not. It was just first come, first served.

I fear people are forgetting that time when conversation on Twitter — for all its problems — was at least real. There were indeed inauthentic accounts who could poison the conversation. I remember well, for instance, the army of trolls who would swarm over

Clare Craig

’s posts when her account became influential.

But now the conversation itself is fake. There is no real dialogue. Either we howl with the wolves, all saying the exact same thing and reposting the exact same amplified posts from favored accounts, who at best say nothing new and at worst say much that is misleading or false, or we howl all alone at the moon. Which is what I am reduced to doing most of the time on X.

So, in short, we need an alternative, I need an alternative. We need to start over, rather than accepting our status as intellectual serfs of the algorithm. The X algorithm is the most horrifying instrument of social control certainly that I have ever observed or experienced in my lifetime. It has turned what used to be real people into ventriloquist’s dummies right before our eyes.

The fact of the matter is that X is not even a “social media” platform anymore. It is a mere simulacrum of a social media platform that is every bit as top-down and managed as traditional media were and are. You get to play your part, so long as you say what the algorithm wants you to say.

So, in short, please try Notes and talk to me/with me on Notes. I have been posting occasionally and will aim to do more if I see signs of life there.

I have not the slightest doubt what is the driving force behind the covert censorship and manipulation of the X algorithm, as well as the more traditional, overt censorship on other social media. It is the European Union.

I have written about this a million times, and it is precisely when I called out the “Twitter Files” as a smokescreen in my “The EU Files: What Elon Musk Is Not Telling You About Twitter Censorship” that not only my Twitter account but indeed my articles published elsewhere started to be throttled on the platform. The drop in the reach of that article as compared to my prior articles, including my prior articles on Twitter censorship, was dramatic. The algorithm appears to know “Robert Kogon”.

I have no doubt that if Substack Notes grows significantly as an alternative, the EU is going to come after Substack. The proper response at that time will be for Substack to leave the EU altogether. Let the EU sink into an informational dark ages. But let freedom ring elsewhere (and Europeans use VPNs).

End rant. Thoughts welcome.