Check-In's

Click on each link below to see photos from the "check-ins"
of Stephen Grande and Barbara Cepinko for each month:

CLICK HERE for all other photos.

Starting in May 2020, all the photos from places that Barbara and I visit will be posted to www.SteveGrande.com/check-in and not to my Facebook. Some activity is posted to Barbara's Facebook account. I have returned to Twitter and post a little there. I am hoping the take over of Twitter by Elon Musk goes through and free speech returns to Twitter. If you wish to follow our activity, please check this page from time to time.

The best way to reach me is by email. Just send an email to steve @ trainweb.com. I always reply to emails from family and friends and often from others as long as it is not spam email.

From The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU):

What's at stake here is the ability of one platform that serves as a forum for the speech of billions of people to use its enormous power to censor speech on the basis of its own determinations of what is true, what is hateful, and what is offensive.

Given Facebook's nearly unparalleled status as a forum for political speech and debate, it should not take down anything but unlawful speech, like incitement to violence. Otherwise, in attempting to apply more amorphous concepts not already defined in law, Facebook will often get it wrong. Given the enormous amount of speech uploaded every day to Facebook's platform, attempting to filter out "bad" speech is a nearly impossible task. The use of algorithms and other artificial intelligence to try to deal with the volume is only likely to exacerbate the problem.

If Facebook gives itself broader censorship powers, it will inevitably take down important speech and silence already marginalized voices.

https://www.aclu.org/blog/free-speech/internet-speech/facebook-shouldnt-censor-offensive-speech

From The New York Post:

These companies are increasingly dictating what their users should and should not see and believe. They are kicking out good users and taking down countless harmless posts, pages and groups simply for asking questions or presenting opinions that differ with those from the company's executives and authorities. This widespread censorship of ideas would make George Orwell dizzy and runs counter to the whole purpose of social networking.

https://nypost.com/2020/05/22/why-social-media-censorship-is-worse-than-useless/