With dark clouds of authoritarian control and censorship growing eerier by day, many fed up people are on their way to exiting the social media maelstrom in an effort to escape from Big Brother’s Big Tech trap. Whether you stay or go, here are some fundamental facts that we need a daily reminder and honest assessment of. The reason is, the question of whether to stay or leave is actually about your soul.
My soul, you say?
Yes. Who owns the ‘you’ that makes you you?
A refresher.
THE SOUL DILEMMA
In a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, we’ve all be swept up, okay ensnared, by the Big Tech Swingers who have given us the wonders of the internet, email, online shopping, smart phones, online porn and gambling, texting, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, Amazon, Google, Apple and more.
We are enmeshed in their parallel reality. (They don’t call it the Net for nothing.) They own it. They think they own us, too.
As spelled out by tech insiders turned whistleblowers featured in the Netflix docu-drama, “The Social Dilemma”, the Big Tech Swingers manipulate your behavior and have put you in a social media bubble.
Actually, they have captured and exploited your soul.
What you do online leaves more than just digital footprints. It alters your neurochemistry and other neurological activity. It alters you concept of your self and changes your relationship with everything in the ‘real’ world.
More importantly, as we tend to ignore, what we do online is also a direct reflection of the state of your soul. If you are wondering about the state of your soul, look at what you are doing online.
You have a concept, an image, of who you are. It is your identity, your sense of self. You are unique. There will never be another you. Like no two snowflakes out of trillions are alike, and like no two galaxies out of trillions of galaxies are identical, every soul, your soul, is singular in God’s eyes.
As I discussed in Creepy Valley: The Soul in the Land of Transhumanism, to the Big Tech Swingers ‘you’ and your ‘soul’ are merely the accumulation of everything you have done online.
All the pictures, videos, messages, texts, phone calls are permanently recorded. These will endure as a digital ‘golem’ long after you have left your physical body and it has returned to dust.
Every time you go online a ‘twin’ version of yourself — your golem — interacts with corporations, governments and an intelligence beyond the comprehension of the average individual. This is called your ‘avatar’.
In the near future, this ‘digital soul’ or golem can be ‘resurrected’ and placed in any kind of container you wish (digital synthetic being, robot, clone) and it is still ‘you’, according to the Big Tech Swingers. Long into the future ‘you’ could be jumping containers.
Have you given this much thought? If not, I would encourage you to do so. Your real soul’s recognition of this dilemma is what is driving you to exit Facebook and other media platforms.
ENMESHED
According to estimates, 50 billion devices are now connected to the internet. From the moment your boots hit the boards in the morning you are surrounded by ‘smart’ devices. Some of them are watching and listening to you. You (your soul), and your flesh and blood body, are now one of the devices on what the WEF calls the “Internet of Bodies”. We are “hackable animals.”
The boundary is now becoming blurred between reality and virtuality, the real world nurtures the virtual world and vice versa. This fact is becoming passé, but the enormous metaphysical consequences on our souls have not been digested.
If you were born before 2,000 you likely are not completely embodied in this new world. You are still a bit ‘wild’, but you are well on your way to being wired. Your image, thoughts, voice, are all recorded. All of these daily bits are like cells coagulating into an online version of you. It doesn’t have a body… just yet. You are not thinking about it just yet, but by 2023 you will start thinking about creating a cartoon version of yourself that is the embodied version of ‘you’ on line.
If you were born after 2000 you have most certainly gone from wild to wired. For you, the online and offline worlds have merged. You have already created an avatar, a digitally enhanced and ascended being who is better than you at everything. You may never get out of the Net. You may not want to. The reason is because you are an addict. Facebook saw to this early on.
In the cold, 1’s and 0s world of the Big Tech Swingers like Facebook, ’you’ are a ‘user’ (their term) who they addicted to their service. Just watch this classic clip of Facebook co-founder, Sean Parker, recalling the evil decision he and his co-conspirators made to intentionally exploit human frailty for cash. Facebook has nearly 2 billion active monthly “users” worldwide. That’s 2 billion addicts feeding Facebook.
A WAKE UP CALL
Everyone of these ‘users’, of all ages, shares one thing in common.
According to many digital platforms, the Big Tech Swingers, you do not have control over or own your own data, digital assets or image. Or your voice for that matter. So, as you create this ‘ascended’ synthetic version of yourself, you will not own it.
This means that, in their terms, you do not own your soul.
This may sound shocking, but it should not be news.
Again, thanks to whistle blowers, in the past few years we have become increasingly aware that through those labyrinthine user agreements you agreed to with such companies as Facebook, and many other Big Tech Swingers, they track your every movement and “share” it with each other. They know what you watch, buy, browse on line and where you go and what you do offline. They sell the data they collect about you to advertisers and make billions upon billions of dollars. You get nothing because you are not aware of this or you don’t care. These companies are determined to make sure this “sharing” arrangement with ‘users’ remains forever…literally.
One would think that what you put online is your property. You put these assets there. They are you, after all. But they own it? Yes. Therefore, they own ‘you’. Yes.
Or do they?
Facebook says that if you don’t like their totalitarian tendencies and you want to take back control of your ‘soul’ you can leave. Just press “Download Your Data” (DYD) and f-off.
All your stuff will be permanently deleted, they promise. You will have DYD or ‘died’ to them.
But that is not entirely true. Facebook is rather like the Hotel California. You can check out, but they still own you.
As Wired observes, through DYD tool users can download and review a lot of information, including status updates, messages you thought were deleted, drafts of videos that were never published, facial-recognition data, a list of people you unfriended (and the spats you had with them), and, for some Android users, a list of phone calls and text messages.
But DYD does not tell you everything Facebook knows about you, says Wired. Among the information not included:
- information Facebook collects about your browsing history
- information Facebook collects about the apps you visit and your activity within those apps
- the advertisers who uploaded your contact information to Facebook more than two months earlier
- ads that you interacted with more than two months prior
Mark Zuckerberg presented the tool as a check on its power, but Facebook controls what it reveals. Likewise, Zuckerberg says people own their data, but the company considers the insights squeezed from that data to be its property. Using those insights you give them about you, Facebook generates $40 billion in annual revenue, massive profit margins, and a market value approaching $500 billion.
If you want to start using DYD and die on Facebook here’s how.
ONE LAST CHANCE
The good news is in November 2020 California voters passed Proposition 24, a new law that mandates that Facebook and Google get their hands off your data. It also will make it harder for these predators to track you as it will enable you to opt out of their Gestapoesque or KGBesque spying and their ability to “share” your data. This is effectively a nationwide mandate.
This is the beginning of what needs to happen or it is the end of free speech, and free souls, for all.
Here is why.
Today, platforms such as Twitter, Facebook and TikTok are the primary source of information for hundreds of millions of people. They not only have replaced network TV, radio and newspapers, but have also twisted the relationship between user and provider. The content on social media sites comes from users themselves, rather than from the provider. They distribute the content you create. To protect them from nasty or untrue things you might say on their site these companies were given protection, Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act . This makes them immune to lawsuits and enables them to remove any content they wish without giving users a “reasonable explanation”, adequate notice or an opportunity to respond.
The problem is Section 230 grants the Big Tech Swingers immunity when they remove, block or otherwise censor content. These companies are using this all powerful tool to censor anyone who does not agree with them about topics like presidential elections, viruses, vaccines and more. They can do this they think they are gods and you are just a user. Remember, they own you (and the politicians who legalized this shield).
President Trump has led a crusade tried to pry off the Big Tech Swinger’s legal shield. Joe Biden called for Section 230 to be revoked.
As I write this on December 4, 2020, Nancy Pelosi and Mitch McConnell have teamed up to insure the Big Tech Swingers are shielded by attaching Trump’s Section 230 termination clause into a Defense bill. Trump promises a veto. Of course, opponents have made this issue about Trump and how furious he is about the power of the Big Tech Swingers. If only they knew that Section 230 goes beyond the financial aspect and the offensive belief that ‘you’ are a commodity to be swapped, sold, studied and judged (and shut up, if the Big Tech Swingers wish).
What it is really about is owning your data is a human right that has been taken from you. So has your right to free speech in the digital sphere. This is a really big spiritual deal. If Pelosi, McConnell and the Defense establishment win our chance to control our soul in the digital sphere will never come back.