No Kings organizers obstructed online, billionaires bankrolling distractions
It's October 19, 2026, and the billionaires are acting up.
Did you know? Millions of people showed out at No Kings marches across the United States on Saturday, in another day of the muscular exercise of loud, vocal discontent.
But scanning network news, online mainstream media, and in particular, social media, you may have missed the entire thing, if you weren't otherwise involved. Kudos to you if you were.
Meta – the company formerly known as Facebook, which also operates Instagram, Threads and WhatsApp – shut down the No Kings organizers account for hours on Saturday. When they came back online, those organizers were still unable to gain admin access – basically screwing with the No Kings outreach on the day of the marches that have been planned for months.
The march works to register voters and underscore how much this administration in particular is universally reviled.
Later on Saturday, Meta announced it was a technical error, spurred by increased activity all of the sudden on the account, triggering the shutdown as a safety measure.
As you know, this is a very unsatisfactory explanation. This isn't 2006. A surge of activity on an account on the very day of its semiannual event was both foreseen, expected and ultimately a failure of infrastructure, if we're to believe the explanation.
But that ain't it, of course. They are trying to interfere with small-D democratic organizers, because the same citizens, here and abroad, who are loudly protesting the drift to the Hard Right across the globe, are also largely against the forced adoption of Artificial Intelligence and Digital Surveillance that social media companies are all in on. It's bad for business to have this many people complaining, in particular on your own platform.
This isn't a free-speech issue necessarily. These are private for-profit companies, and those who run them are free to moderate the content they platform as they see fit.
But putting thumbs on the scale like this in an effort to squash comment and participation is showing their whole ass. No company's ongoing success is guaranteed, no matter how long they've been successful so far.
Looking at you Target.
It's exceedingly difficult to operate at work or in your daily life without using social media in some manner – I'm doing it myself right here on this platform.
The best way to strike back at these oligarchic overlords is to stop using the products. Easier said than done. But that's the reality – go outside, touch grass, open a book, have a conversation.
Meta said their internal A.I. detected all the increased No Kings traffic and attributed it to bot activity – more A.I., more bots – they made the announcement on Twitter. If you're still on Twitter after 2022, you are drinking at a Nazi bar. There simply is no excuse to be active on Musk's platform, which is unreadable due to all of the malevolent bot activity, the Mecha-Hitler feeding everyone bad information, and the literal Nazis overrunning the site for years now – not to mention the countless complaints about A.I. pornification and CSAM distribution. There is no rationale for staying. The fact that major accounts like the New York Times or say Notre Dame football or the Today Show or McDonald's or whatever are still posting there just demonstrates the inertia of the marketplace. You don't have to be a part of it – not to mention consuming content on X directly puts money in Elon's pocket.
Speaking of Elon Musk, he pulled off another Tesla marketing stunt on Friday, purporting to launch a Tesla sedan straight up a Matchbox-car-style runway, getting about 100 feet vertical, then flipping around and landing on all four wheels in a flourish of compressed air and flashing lights.
It gracefully fell. Musk calls it a flying car. It's barely that – it was a bare-bones skeleton of a vehicle without the standard Tesla battery, which would have weighed it down considerably. In other words, this thing is not available to the public, or more than a one-off production model.
There are already prototypes of actual flying cars, which operate more like helicopters or hovercraft. They've been around for years. We're still waiting for Tesla's Full Self Driving to work properly.
And what's the prediction, anyway? I live in Los Angeles, and I'm not enthusiastic about the assholes I share the roadways with all of the sudden having access to the airspace above me and I crawl up the 405 Freeway on a Tuesday. I mean, can you imagine the catastrophic and deadly crashes this would produce? How would you even regulate "air traffic?" Which is to say the whole thing is a fantasy of a distraction.
A distraction from the new Alex Gibney documentary about Musk, called "Musk" – nearly four hours long, which is reportedly not particularly kind covering Musk's delusions of grandeur and less than stellar business acumen. He's an investor, not an inventor, which this flick makes clear. Despite its length, it's being well-received, and it's gathering buzz. Musk can't stand not being adored – and he's mad about it.
In the same vein, Nathan Fielder's "You Can See Everything" – another overly long documentary, this one about Theranos found Elizabeth Holmes, no serving prison time for fraud – is not only getting good reviews, it's also beating other mainstream movies at the box office.
The mood of the country, and the world, is bad. The energy is shifting. People are pissed and there's a lot of momentum against these bullies who have fucked up daily life for a decade now.
Be Safe, Be Good.
19OCT26.FR--