Moron Alert

February 5, 2026

Unfortunately, even a small and friendly town like Oberon has its share of people who behave like idiots.

A lot of people in town know Lincoln Briffa and are aware of his dedication to telling everyone about mental health. He recently had restrictions placed on him by Facebook because someone complained that he was spreading false information about mental health. He wasn't, unless republishing information from Beyond Blue is in that category (and it isn't). The algorithm kicked in and of course the identity of the complainer couldn't be revealed.

If you disagree with something someone says or does, confront them directly. Don't run crying to mummy with a request to hide who you are.

None of this is new. A few years ago the loons opposing vaccination decided to lodge complaints of harassment to Facebook. The harassment claims took the form of complaining that people were mentioning their names. If you use Facebook you will know that when you reply to someone's comment the system automatically fills in the name of the person you are responding to. Yes, these cretins were whingeing that Facebook was doing what Facebook does for everyone. Again the algorithm kicked in. I was suspended several times and on one occasion all the admins of a Facebook page were suspended, and at least one had his account cancelled. Appeals to Facebook might have resulted in suspensions being lifted by they wasted a lot of time.

The person leading the charge later tried to get a court to impose an Apprehended Violence Order on me, requesting the following order: "The defendant must not mention the name of the applicant in any online forum in any derogatory manner." The case dragged on for months and when the magistrate finally ruled that there was no way she could make such an order the applicant burst into tears. Only the fact that I was visible to the courtroom prevented me from breaking out laughing.

One good thing that came out of that was the the NSW Attorney General told me that there were plans to change the law to prevent the AVO process from being used in a frivolous manner. AVOs are for stalking, domestic abuse and other real threats, but the courts were being clogged with complaints about people mowing their lawns on Sunday morning, washing their cars on the nature strip and leaving the bins out after garbage collection night.

Over at YouTube getting something taken down is even easier. All you have to do is make a copyright claim and the video will be immediately removed. The video below lasted two days before a complaint from the organisation around faith-healing charlatan Benny Hinn claimed copyright. There is not a single pixel in it that came from anything produced by the Hinn clown show. Appealing against the removal was impossible and resulted in falling into a loop that kept sending me back to the same page at YouTube.

And if you think you might have to identify yourself and support your copyright claim, I had two videos removed following complaints from the obviously falsely named "Gold tv Prof. Dr. Hans-Peter Steinrück". Two complaints with the moron claiming to act for two different television networks. On the same day.