Today on Facebook I posted a share to my Friends of Friends about how I had suspected that a thick stripe of politically motivated sponsored stories on my Facebook feed had appeared, and that I suspected them all of being Russian trolls. Ever since 2016, when Facebook was the fertile ground for the first Russian meddling in our presidential election, and then there was Cambridge Analytica, that now when I spot a political sponsored post, I immediately suspect Russian meddling.

Russia attacked my country. A silent war, not a shot fired, but it was Russia none the less. And so, in the spirit of that attack, on Facebook, I referred to them as “Filthy Russians”, because they meddled where they should not have. I don’t need to prove the meddling, Robert Mueller did that in his report, after all. Everyone can see it for themselves. So, this phrase, “Filthy Russians” was flagged by Facebook as hate speech.

Here it is, the service I hate to use slapping me with a gag for 24 hours. I regard this as a badge of pride. Facebook was the platform that refuses to take responsibility for Russian meddling, they are the ones at the center of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, and here they are silencing me as I call out Russian trolls who are just starting to ramp up their attacks on my country again, now that we are on the edge of 2020.

I have let my blog go fallow for far too long. As I was considering this image from Facebook, it struck me that it would be a great conversation piece to start talking about defending ourselves against Russian aggression. But how would we start to defend ourselves? A great place to start is having everyone who is going to have a sponsored page on Facebook register their citizenship with the service so that we can see if the source of the sponsored messaging come from our fellow Americans, or say, as we suspect, from Russian trolls. I think that would be a great place to start.

So I can browse through Facebook, but I cannot comment or post for the next 24 hours. Fine. I can of course post on my blog whenever I feel the whim and nobody can slap a gag on this blog. I have been kicking around the notion of sharing from the blog and posting links to Facebook anyways. I pay for this after all, why not make more use of it?