Colm Kenny, writing in the Sunday Independent and citing the Centre for Countering Digital Hate, tells us that Mark Zuckerberg’s changes to Meta are going to “create a ‘tidal wave of unchallenged lies, increasing the spread of hate,”[Also in the Sunday Independent, Brendan O’Connor, while agreeing that “fact-checking is censorship” and concluding, perhaps prematurely, that “…woke is over” nevertheless feels constrained to conclude that we may have over-corrected for the recent dominant right-on-ness and that “Ireland won’t escape the Age of the A**hole.” Who are these a**holes? [Yes, you’ve guessed it!

Donald Trump: the a**hole “all other a**holes are modelled on; Elon Musk: the kind of a**hole we all knew in school of college; and Mark Zuckerberg: the nerdy a**hole who “follows around the two major a**holes trying to be in their gang. The pathetic a**hole.

The panic among the liberal intelligentsia is tangible. It seems that, for them, the changing social media environment is the digital equivalent of climate change—life-threatening, unstoppable and badly in need of regulation by our superiors that will protect us from hate and misinformation and disinformation and lies.

We don’t need censorious regulation of the media, print or electronic. We simply need to accept the principle that it is our responsibility to form our beliefs and attitudes and that, as the most obvious of principles would dictate, we shouldn’t believe everything we see or hear, even if it appears in the Sunday Independent or on X or on Meta or on RTE or on the BBC….

In the marketplace of goods and services, our guiding principle is caveat emptor—let the buyer beware. In the marketplace of information, our guiding principle should be caveat credens—let the believer beware.

@DavQuinn @timcrowley_ @OdohertyI64991 @Michael08483429 @ThomasEWoods @Furedibyte