Greetings “End /Interesting Times” Friends,

For some of you, my last newsletter possibly found its way into your spam folder with the following message in bright red background at the top of the page:

“This message might be dangerous

It contains a suspicious link that was used to steal people's personal information. Avoid clicking links or replying with personal information.”

First, let me address the message's warning:

That newsletter contained three links.

1- A link to The Unz Review.

2- A link to YouTube.

3- A link to my donation page, which is on my website, which is platformed on Squarespace, a multibillion dollar website company that uses Squarespace's built-in donation feature. I use the built-in Squarespace newsletter template to send these newsletters. According to Google, Squarespace processes payments through Squarespace Payments, which is built on Stripe, a multi-billion dollar financial corporation. There is no way for me to access your personal data from any of those 3 links. The only information I have is your email address, which allows me to send you the newsletter.

If you didn’t receive the last e-newsletter due to spam rerouting and you want to read it, go to the Tao is Now website, click on the Newsletter Archives tab, and scroll down to newsletter #14.

Obviously the Squarespace-Google, etc., trigger-warning was false. But why tack on a message that scares readers and routes the newsletter to spam? I researched it via ChatGPT & Reddit. Apparently, when a "sensitive" subject line appears on a Squarespace platformed newsletter & then goes through Gmail or other email security interfaces, the newsletter often gets "scary message" flagged by the algorithm. My last e-newsletter contained a "sensitive" subject line. My previous ones that got through, not so much.

When it comes to "sensitive”- I’m a hot tamale.

Squarespace was purchased in 2024 by global private equity firm Permira. I think most of you have an idea about the entities behind Google and other Big Tech platforms.

As the socio-political-economic climate worsens, censorship tightens. YouTube is performing another round of "sensitive" political channel deletions. While there is a small group of non-mainstream media geopolitical channels that still receive high traffic flows, I surmise the machine lets those opposition voices exist to show that Big Tech allows alternate views, until the time comes when maintaining that illusion is no longer necessary.

Also, many "alternative news" channels are psychological operations.

I communicate directly to you from my website to avoid Big Tech social media censorship, so I'm looking to move Tao is Now to a hosting platform that is more free-speech friendly. This will take a little time and money (hopefully not too much). I could build (which really means paying someone to build) a WordPress site from scratch, but that's a bit more work and money than using an existing platform, nor is that option completely censorship proof. It they want to take you down, they do it.

Until I transition to a new website hosting platform (which should probably be soon), I'll be more careful in regard to my wording. Hopefully that handles it, and if not, that means I’m on the super hot tamale list. Switching platforms might produce some initial delivery glitches, but I'll inform you if that happens.

As to how this instance of Big Tech sensitivity relates to the current state of affairs- like we say in Tao: "This is this."

Cheers,

Richard