TimoMalum.com

Why I No Longer Use Vivaldi Browser.

I was an early adopter of the Vivaldi web browser. I must have been one of the first users in the United States because whenever I would mention it, the usual response was, "I've never heard of it". Fast forward a few years and it's become one of the fastest growing browsers available, and for good reasons: it's full of features, it's privacy-focused (although it's not the most private one out there), it looks good, and it's highly customizable. It has so many features, in fact, that you'll probably never use most of them, and that's one reason I began to lose enthusiasm. I felt  it was becoming too large and complicated, and a few bugs crept in that seemed to take forever to find and fix. But I still liked it, for the most part, especially the "notes" feature and its bookmark system.

So what happened? Why did I dump Vivaldi?

It came down to free speech, or rather, Vivaldi's unwillingness to defend free speech. This isn't specifically a browser issue but is instead an issue with Vivaldi Technologies, the company that makes the browser. A few years ago, they decided to self-host their own instance of Mastodon social media, which they named "Vivaldi Social". (Mastodon is the name of a linked network of independent social media sites where users can see and comment on posts from the other independently-run instances of Mastodon. It's sort of like what you'd have if Facebook, Twitter, and MeWe all decided to adopt similar user interfaces and allowed each other's members to talk to each other without having to join every site. It's a way for small-time operators to be a part of something much bigger.) In 2023 Vivaldi said, "With our server capabilities, plenty of know-how and enthusiasm in the team, it was easy yet challenging to host our own server to accommodate people migrating to Mastodon. With Vivaldi Social, we want to offer ‘the good old days of the Internet’, where the sense of community is a lot stronger with people." They had good intentions, it seems, but things aren't going very well. Censorship is out of control on Vivaldi Social, as it is on most instances of Mastodon.

Over the years Mastodon has gotten a reputation for being an echo chamber for "woke" radical leftists. Although each instance of Mastodon can have its own focus, most of them seem to attract people with the same ideologies, and the moderators make sure anyone with dissenting opinions gets silenced or kicked out. In theory there could be Mastodon instances that welcome libertarians, conservatives, or anarchists, but I haven't found one yet. So far, all that I've used have adopted the same "communitarian" hive-mind agenda, and no speech that strays from that agenda is tolerated.

I had hoped Vivaldi Social would be different, since it comes from a privacy-focused company that's "fighting for a better web".

My hope was short-lived.

Within just a couple of days of joining and posting on Vivaldi Social, I began to get notices from the moderators that my posts were violating their community guidelines, even though I was careful to follow the rules and actually self-censored to a degree to keep from getting kicked out. I didn't post anything I couldn't back up with sources, but I soon found out that my sources didn't matter to the moderators. Yet people with views contrary to mine seemed to be able to post whatever they wanted with no data to support their claims. When I politely challenged those claims and asked for source material, the moderators penalized me for that too. Simply asking questions got me flagged for posting "false or misleading information".

Here are a few examples of the authoritarian insanity I (briefly) dealt with on Vivaldi Social:

My first strike was received on April 21, 2025. Vivaldi Social's moderators claimed I had posted "intentionally false or misleading information", yet the "proof" they provided shows all I did was ask a question. Another user had posted a statement that COVID was still a serious threat that was killing people. She made the claim, so the burden of proof falls on her. I asked for that proof. Vivaldi Social wouldn't allow me to ask that question, so my post was removed. The original post that I challenged stayed up. I appealed. The appeal was rejected. 

Next, I posted a link to an article I had written on this blog. The article, entitled "Protect The Children", featured a graphic of a baby surrounded by vaccine syringes and a statement by Dr Sherri Tenpenny on how parents have a responsibility to do their own research to protect their children. No claims were made by either myself or Dr Tenpenny that vaccines are dangerous. And yet the post was tagged as "intentionally false or misleading information". I got another strike. I appealed. The appeal was rejected. 

Not long after the second strike, I got a third one, once again for asking a question. A user had made a false claim that face masks protect us from diseases, so I challenged the claim. I asked for "credible science to prove your point about masks", adding that I could provide several studies that prove she's wrong. The moderators didn't say how my question violated any policies or community guidelines, but they used it as an excuse to limit my account so that virtually no one could see it anymore. I appealed. The appeal was rejected.

Five days later, I replied to a post that criticized Donald Trump by claiming he was pushing authoritarianism and attacking free speech. I didn't disagree with the claim, but I wanted to know why the person making the post never criticized Joe Biden, who was one of the most authoritarian, pro-censorship presidents in modern history. Once again for asking a question, I got a strike for posting "intentionally or misleading information". I appealed. The appeal was rejected.  At this point I'm wondering what social media is all about if we're not allowed to ask questions and have conversations.

Around this same time I got a comment from a user who couldn't say anything intelligent and instead resorted to cheap insults and vulgar language. I didn't file a complaint, because I thought that would be petty and vindictive. The comment stayed up. And to be fair, the person making the comment was registered on a different Mastodon instance, but it shows you can be vulgar without penalty in the woke world of the radical left.

Finally, on May 18 my account was permanently suspended.  Vivaldi Social's moderators claimed I had posted material that violated their community guidelines on "harassment, dogpiling, or doxxing of other users" and sharing "intentionally false or misleading information". For the first charge, I had replied to another user's post, saying "Mastodon isn't a social media site. It's a thought-control site. Their moderators seek to impose their personal agendas upon the rest of the world." I'm guessing that by now the moderators were watching everything I was posting and looking for excuses to get rid of me, and by now I knew I was on the way out so I really didn't care if I offended them or not. For the second charge, I was once again given a strike for asking a question. I asked, "May I respectfully ask why the left never speaks out about the crimes of Democratic Party politicians? Why was nothing said when Biden tried to impose censorship across social media? Why was nothing said when Obama made it legal for the US government to use propaganda against citizens? I'm really curious." Even though my questions were based on factual events that I could easily prove, the moderators apparently decided that protecting the hive was more important than discussing reality. They kicked me out. I did not appeal, because I knew that it was pointless.

Although I like the Vivaldi browser, I cannot continue to use or support it. It's my firm belief that free speech is the only way to prevent the world from sliding into oppressive totalitarianism. We can't protect our freedom when we're overly concerned with protecting someone's feelings or preserving any delusions they're holding onto that were created by fascist (government/corporate) propaganda. Unfortunately too many people prefer the illusion of safety over their God-given freedom, and companies like Vivaldi seem very willing to go along. By permanently suspending my Vivaldi Social account, Vivaldi Technologies has made the decision to silence me, a decision I endorse if I continue to use their products.

And in case you're wondering, I now use the Floorp browser, a version of Firefox developed by an independent team in Japan. I like it so far, and they haven't tried to impose their social or political views on their users. Not yet, at least.

Revealed: The Many Evils Of Facebook.

In 2014, Facebook publicly admitted to manipulating the news feeds of almost 700,000 users without their knowledge. The goal? To measure whether it was possible to change people's emotional states simply by controlling the type of content that appeared on their screens.

For a week, some users received more negative posts, while others only saw positive messages. The result confirmed what was already suspected: people's moods were affected — and they began to post content with the same emotional charge that they were consuming.

This experiment, conducted in partnership with university researchers, revealed something frightening: social networks have the power to manipulate emotions en masse in a silent, almost invisible way — and all this without the need for violence, just with algorithms.

The question that remains is: if they did this in a "scientific" test, what else has been tested in silence? And how many decisions that we think are ours were actually induced by invisible lines of code?

[graphic & text courtesy of Revellati Online]

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Related content:

A study entitled, "The Effect Of Deactivating Facebook And Instagram On Users' Emotional State" has just been released by the National Bureau of Economic Research. The study says there "is an active debate over how social media affect users’ psychological well-being. Do social media make people happier, for example by facilitating beneficial social connections? Or do they make people depressed and anxious, for example by reducing face-to-face interactions or increasing unfavorable social comparisons? Some analysts argue that social media have contributed to the alarming recent decline in young people’s mental health." The study concludes, "Our estimates suggest that deactivating Facebook or Instagram improved people’s emotional state."

If being experimented on isn't enough and you aren't worried about Facebook affecting your mental state, here's another reason to break your social media addiction: privacy. A new article has been published on Tuta.com entitled, "All The Data Facebook Collects - And How To Stop This". The article goes into a fair amount of detail on how Facebook tags and tracks your behavior, but here's an overview:

What data does Facebook collect and track?

• All your profile information
• Any actions you've performed on the platform
• How you engage with content
• Your political preferences
• Your device's data
• All your browsing data
• Your current and past locations
• Your purchasing habits online and in stores

Most people have no idea that posting a favorite cookie recipe on Facebook opens them up to this kind of surveillance. It's probably revealed somewhere deep in a user agreement written by a highly paid attorney, but few people read those agreements in their entirety, and companies like Meta (Facebook's corporate name) take full advantage of it.

Unfortunately the only way back to safety is to delete your Facebook account, and most likely the accounts of any other Meta products you use, such as Instagram and WhatsApp. If that's a bridge too far for you, Tuta.com has another guide you might find useful: "How To Make Your Facebook Private: Yes, It Is Possible".

Isn't it time you take back your life from the soulless tech companies that play with your emotions and harvest your personal data for profit?

Bluesky Proves The Land Of The Left Is The Land Of The Lost.

It didn't take long. Another social media site run by the radical left has kicked me out. Not long after having my Mastodon accounts deleted without cause, Bluesky has now done the same. To be honest, I'm surprised I lasted as long as I did, but not because I broke any rules. To the contrary, I was polite and civil and did my best to link to sources whenever I posted anything related to health and science issues. But I did post news articles and podcasts that I hoped would open some minds and maybe create a dialog. For my efforts I was called a Nazi and a MAGA cultist, and my sources were all dismissed as being not good enough for the pseudo-intellectuals who read my posts. But I wasn't very active on Bluesky at all, preferring to keep a low profile and gently nudging rather than shoving in an attempt to not be cancelled. How did it work out? Here's the email I received from the "Bluesky Moderation Team":

Bluesky's moderators claim I posted content that promoted "hateful content" or was "disruptive to others". This claim is a lie. I was careful to be respectful of others. I'm not a bully and never have been, but I will stand up for myself if attacked and I will correct misinformation when I see it. But apparently in the land of the left, replying with factual data is perceived as being disruptive. The left has become so obsessed with conformity and obedience that instead of resembling the free-love hippies of the 1960's they're now more like the hive-mind Borg creatures of Star Trek. Independent thought isn't allowed. Be assimilated or be destroyed.

They don't believe in shared truth. They use words as weapons. They rely on you implicitly assuming that they have good intentions and are aiming at shared truth. It's a deception. For Marxists, dialogue is not a way of attaining truth. It is a forum for manipulation.

Although I had low expectations, I did go through the motions of filing an appeal to my account's deletion. Two days later and no one at Bluesky has bothered to reply. And honestly, the only reply I expect to get is "appeal rejected", which is the reply I got from Mastodon and also a year earlier from Elon Musk's Twitter/X.

This is the world we now live in: a world where mentally weak anonymous authoritarians function as social media moderators and censor anything that upsets their frail emotions or is seen as a threat to their demonic Marxist agenda. It isn't possible to have a real conversation with these people. Dissenting opinions are dismissed without thought. Their minds are closed. Their science is settled. Nothing changes until new propaganda is sent to them like a software upgrade.

I gave it my best shot. I tried on three separate social media sites. And now I question if it's possible to co-exist with people who are so mentally shut down, intolerant, and (strangely) arrogant.

Bluesky has proven to me that the land of the left is the land of the lost. But I won't stop talking. I have a voice. It's too bad the people who need to hear it the most will hear nothing but echoes of propaganda and hate coming from the soulless entities that control them.

Censorship Is Fast & Furious On Mastodon.

Pictured above is a screenshot of the message I received from the power-mad moderators on Mastodon.social, one of the largest servers in the Mastodon social media network. Less than two days after I joined, I got my first strike against my account for merely reposting someone else's content. The original post stayed up, but my repost was taken down. The reason given? "Content violates the following community guidelines: Do not share information widely-known to be false and misleading." 

Here's the post:

The original post by Lesley Carhart said, "I am not sure that people outside the US who have not had to deal with a similar party leader understand when we say, 'cult', we mean an actual, completely brainwashed cult. Not just racists. Not just people who like strong men or fascism, as exists globally today. An actual cult, where the members are willing to abandon their families and long-time friends, give away their belongings, and even resort to violence. Nothing, no matter how vile or rational, will get through to them except careful deprogramming. We have to contend with that. It can happen to you. Please be careful out there."

At first I thought she had to be talking about the Marxist Democratic Party, since all the things she describes are what I see every day among the brainwashed leftists. But then I saw her hashtags, which all point to "blue" targets. It was then I realized she was talking about Republicans and probably anyone who supports Donald Trump. 

I could go point by point and destroy Carhart's post, but my concern isn't so much with her as it is with the moderators at Mastodon. Why was my repost considered a violation of community standards? Was it what Carhart said, or how I replied? My reply to the post said, "Members of a radical leftist cult think YOU'RE in a cult, and must be "deprogrammed". 

My reply was true, because that's clearly what Carhart said should happen to Republicans. Is pointing out the truth a violation of community standards, or is the act of criticizing a leftist my real violation? To be clear, Carhart's post originally appeared on Infosec.exchange, another Mastodon server, but was then made visible on Mastodon.social, where my account is. (If you're not familiar with the Mastodon "Fediverse", this probably seems confusing.) It's possible the original post met the standards on Infosec.exchange, but not Mastodon.social, and by reposting it and adding a comment, I brought it to the attention of the Mastodon.social moderators who might have been okay with my comment but not the original post. Unfortunately, I will never know. I appealed the strike, asking how the repost and comment were "widely-known to be false and misleading". Within a few minutes, I got a reply: Appeal Denied. I wasn't given the courtesy of an explanation.

I really wasn't surprised. The same thing happened to me on Twitter/X, only worse: a permanent suspension with no reason given, and no response to my appeal. This seems to be the standard operating procedure for social media sites now that the stench of authoritarianism has begun spreading around the world.

But what makes it so ironic is that the majority of the posts on Mastodon are from Democrats and other Marxists who constantly whine about the dangers of MAGA fascism. Can one of them explain how censorship from the left, often in cooperation with the government and big tech companies, is anything but fascism?

Worse than I've ever seen in my life, people are radically divided by their political ideologies. We all have more common ground than we realize, but the powerful people in the establishment and the media hacks they employ work day and night to drive wedges between us. In many cases, each side believes outright lies about the other, fueled by propaganda and other deliberate efforts to keep us fighting. It's a situation that works very well for the establishment.

Social media promised to bring us together and usher in a new era of communication and understanding. But if power-mad, intolerant moderators abuse their positions and censor things they disagree with, they end up doing harm to society even if they think they're doing something noble.

Mastodon.social has disappointed me in less than two days. They should do better. They HAVE to do better. They, and every other social media site, have a vital responsibility to the public.

They must begin to understand: there is no place for censorship in a free society. But we must begin to understand: many on the left don't want us to be free.

The Arrest Of Pavel Durov.

[click here for a larger version of the image above]

Here is the official press release from the French prosecutor detailing why Telegram founder Pavel Durov was arrested. As you can see, the only thing he's really being charged with is refusing to censor content. As Europe and much of the rest of the world continue to fall into the darkness of totalitarianism, free speech is being attacked like never before. But since the global tyrants can't arrest all of us, they're targeting the people who make free speech possible. 

The more they tighten their grip, the louder we need to talk. Eight billion people can't be easily silenced. Now, more than ever, we must rise up and resist the evil entities who want to steal our property, lock us down, experiment upon us, and destroy our humanity.

It's also time to relearn some older ways of communicating. Signs, posters, flyers, t-shirts, bumper stickers, and direct mail can't be blocked as easily as a social media post. A return to putting ink on paper may be the only way forward if online avenues are censored or shut down. Why not get started today?

The Internet Is A Threat To Human Civilization.

"The world is not sliding, but galloping into a new transnational dystopia. The internet, our greatest tool of emancipation, has been transformed into the most dangerous facilitator of totalitarianism we have ever seen. The internet is a threat to human civilization." -- Julian Assange [2012]