Tea at Trianon: Erin Napier is Accusing Big Tech of Censoring

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Wednesday, March 20, 2024

Erin Napier is Accusing Big Tech of Censoring

From Movie Guide:

Erin Napier is accusing Big Tech of censoring her social media posts about her and her husband Ben’s organization, Osprey. Napier shared how Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, has restricted her posts about Osprey (Old School Parents Raising Engaged Youth). The organization recently held the first-ever Osprey Festival, where families took part in social-media-free activities, but when Napier tried to post pictures of the fun, she noticed something strange.

“Something really weird happened,” she wrote in an Instagram Story. “Meta wouldn’t let images of our #ospreykids logo be tagged in any photos by anyone and wouldn’t allow anyone to tag me or Ben.”

Napier said that she and other festival attendees were not able to post photos from the event, continually receiving a “Try Again Later” message. She also noted that old posts she and Ben had been tagged in were being removed from both social media platforms.

“It would seem that the powers that be would rather our kids be staring at phones than living their real lives, doing, playing, adventuring. So it’s best to try to shut us up. We are bad for business, baby,” she wrote. “If the ways big tech is censoring good causes doesn’t worry you, it should. You may not hear from us much anymore because they don’t want you to.”

Napier previously spoke about concerns that her posts about Osprey were being “suppressed” by Meta. In an interview with PEOPLE, before the festival took place, she said, “Posts [about Osprey] get a tiny fraction of the views that my usual posts do, which is disturbing. I think social media should be the adult town square for sharing information. But if you’re only able to share selective information, that’s scary.” The Napiers established Osprey in the hopes of raising their daughters social-media-free, explaining that a large component of the project was finding other parents to agree to the ban with them.

“We want to make sure our kids don’t feel left out when we don’t let them have social media, as kids through high school,” Erin told TODAY. “How do you do that? I think community is where you begin.” She continued, “‘Everybody else is doing it; We didn’t want to give them social media; We didn’t want to give them a phone, but everybody else it doing it’ … What if there is a way to create communities, small communities within schools, that hopefully become big communities within schools, where families say, ‘We’re not going to [use social media]’? Then (the families) support each other, they kind of make a pledge together when their kids are in about fifth grade, and then they see it through and support each other, share resources.” (Read more.)