Vigilant Citizen – June 28, 2022

First, no, The Vigilant Citizen is not shutting down. Quite to the contrary, the site is starting a new life and is taking steps to safeguard its future.

The first big step: No more ads on the site. No more banners, pop-ups, “recommended articles”, or the tracking cookies they inevitably came with. They’re all gone.

Throughout the years, I’ve received countless messages about these ads and their questionable contents. Sadly, I had no power over what was displayed. Even sadder, I depended on them to cover the costs of running this site.

But I hated these ads as much as you did. And I especially hated dealing with the big tech companies that monopolize the ad industry. It felt as if I was in a toxic relationship with a control freak who threatened to ruin my life every time I said something they didn’t like. In such, nearly every article I posted got flagged for “policy violations” and got demonetized.

Every single day, I got warnings asking me to edit or completely delete articles to comply with policies. To make things worse, the window of what is considered “acceptable speech” keeps getting narrower. Nowadays, if I dare post something like “men cannot get pregnant”, I inevitably get a “policy violation” about the article containing “unreliable and harmful claims” … even though “men cannot get pregnant” is probably the most reliable claim in the history of mankind.

However, stating facts that go against the current narrative has become a cardinal sin. And those who go against it get censored in every way possible. Sites like The Vigilant Citizen, which simply present facts and stay away from any kind of hate speech, cannot get outright censored. So, in an underhanded matter, they force publishers to comply to their agenda by threatening to cut funding through advertising.

I never really complied so the Google employee (or whatever) that was dedicated to scrutinizing my site and flagging it for policy violations became … unhinged.

An example of the absurd warnings I received on a daily basis.

In the screenshot above, Google dug up an article I wrote in 2009 and demonetized it because it was “dangerous or derogatory”. The article was about RANDOM BUILDINGS IN KAZAKHSTAN. Apparently, pointing out that a building is shaped like a pyramid is “derogatory” to that building. Sorry building, hope I didn’t hurt your feelings.

In short, I got sick and tired of dealing with this crap. So the site underwent a massive shift in philosophy.

A New VC Era

Continues …