Posted: January 8, 2025 | Author: bostonboomer | Filed under: 2024 Elections, Donald Trump, just because | Tags: Canada, Denmark, Greenland, Gulf Of Mexico, Mark Zuckerberg, Meta, Panama Canal, social media moderation, Trump press conference |
Good Afternoon!!
Trump holds forth at his Mar-a-Lago press conference.
Trump isn’t in office yet, but he is already dominating the news. It’s difficult to believe, but I think he is actually getting crazier.
Trump 2.0 is going to be chaos to the nth degree. I have no doubt that it will make his first term look sane by comparison. He is aging noticeably–he’s approaching 80–and his dementia is getting worse.
As we all know, this time there won’t be sane handlers trying to hold back his worst inclinations; he will be surrounded by MAGA loyalists who will do whatever he wants. It’s going to be awful, and getting through what’s coming is going to be tough.
Again, he’s not even waiting until he’s sworn in to begin causing trouble. Yesterday he held a “press conference” during which he came off as truly psychotic. In case you missed it (I couldn’t bear to watch), here are some media write-ups.
David E. Sanger at The New York Times:
Dripping Faucets and Seizing Greenland: Trump Is Back and Chaos Ensues.
There was talk of the rising number of beached whales in Massachusetts, the victim, the president-elect said, of those windmills that have been erected off the coast. They “are driving the whales crazy, obviously.”
There was a vow to rename the Gulf of Mexico, by presidential decree, to the “Gulf of America.” And then there was Donald J. Trump’s refusal to rule out using military force to seize the 51-mile Panama Canal on national security grounds, along with the 836,000 square miles of Greenland, the world’s largest island.
Mr. Trump’s family and supporters like to say “We are so back!” and they are, without doubt. Yet as the man who will be president again spun out threats and angry denouncements of the Biden administration and personal grievances for more than an hour on Tuesday in the living room of his Mar-a-Lago club, something else was back: the chaotic stream-of-consciousness presidency.
Mr. Trump has returned to our daily national cognizance, even though one could argue he never really left. Tuesday’s news conference was a reminder of what that was like, and what the next four years may have in store.
He waxed on about a favorite complaint during his first term: Shower heads and sink faucets that don’t deliver water, a symbol of a regulatory state gone mad. “It goes drip, drip, drip,” he said. “People just take longer showers, or run their dishwasher again,” and “they end up using more water.”
Then he moved on to the prospect of a military clash with Denmark. After refusing to rule out the prospect of coercing a NATO ally with the use of force if it remained reluctant to turn over property the president-elect coveted, Mr. Trump suggested that Denmark had a dubious claim on Greenland anyway.
Don Jr. and his buddies in Greenland yesterday
“People really don’t even know if Denmark has any legal right to it, but if they do, they should give it up, because we need it for national security,” he said.
As for Panama, he insisted the United States had to defend against an urgent national security threat from China, though the situation around the canal was little changed from the last time Mr. Trump sat in the Oval Office.
“It might be that you’ll have to do something,” he said with signature vagueness, when asked about his suggestion that the only solution to this problem may be military force.
There was a lot of déjà vu in Tuesday’s news conference, recalling scenes from his first presidency. The conspiracy theories, the made-up facts, the burning grievances — all despite the fact that he has pulled off one of the most remarkable political comebacks in history. The vague references to “people” whom he never names. The flat declaration that American national security was threatened now, without defining how the strategic environment has changed in a way that could prompt him to violate the sovereignty of independent nations.
But there were also several differences in this version of Mr. Trump that are easy to overlook in a man who can move, in an instant, from the failures of American plumbing to the need to revive the territory-grabbing spirit of President William McKinley.
More on the “press conference,” by Hunter Walker at Talking Points Memo:
Off The Rails And Off To The Races.
President Trump has created a massive gulf in America.
No, I am not talking about the half baked promise “to be changing the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America” that Trump announced in his news conference on Tuesday. The gulf that our country actually is going to have is the one between our current reality and the one we will be experiencing when Trump takes office on Jan. 20.
This news conference, which was the first since Trump’s re-election was certified by Congress, was a wild one — even by Trumpian standards. In a little over an hour behind a podium at his Mar-a-Lago beach club, the president-elect, along with promising to rename an ocean basin, threatened potential military force against Panama and Denmark. He also suggested he might use “economic force” to make Canada the 51st State.
“They should be a state,” Trump said of one of America’s closest neighbors and allies.
And, if Hamas doesn’t release the remaining hostages taken in the October 7th attack before Trump’s inauguration, Trump vowed that would also result in a massive show of force.
“If they’re not back by the time I get into office, all hell will break out in the Middle East,” Trump said. “It will not be good for Hamas and it will not be good frankly for anyone. All hell will break out.”
Trump’s feverish foreign policy visions were mixed up with his other weird obsessions and blatant lies. He ranted about President Joe Biden’s efforts to promote electric power and suggested heat generated this way will make you “itch.” As he vowed to make “major pardons” for some of his supporters who attacked the Capitol during the January 6 insurrection, Trump reiterated some of his preferred, debunked conspiracy theories about that day including that, the FBI is concealing the identity of the unknown pipe bomber and that, somehow, the Middle Eastern terrorist group Hezbollah might have played a role in the violence.
“We have to find out about Hezbollah. We have to find out about who exactly was in that whole thing because people that did some bad things were not prosecuted,” Trump said….
The whole thing was objectively bizarre and it’s difficult to track how much of Trump’s comments were bluster or how many of these wild ideas are even remotely feasible. Can you even effectively rename an ocean? Does he really intend to try to essentially annex Canada? Would he really consider using military force to take over Greenland or the Panama Canal? Would the military stand for that? Would Congress?
Minho Kim at The New York Times:
Why Does Trump Want Greenland?
President-elect Donald J. Trump’s attention returned Tuesday to an idea that has fascinated him for years: acquiring Greenland for the United States. In a news conference on Tuesday, he refused to rule out using military or economic force to take the territory from Denmark, a U.S. ally.
“We need Greenland for national security purposes,” he said, arguing that Denmark should give it up to “protect the free world.” He threatened to impose tariffs on Denmark if it did not.
Earlier in the day, Mr. Trump wrote on social media that the potential American acquisition of the Arctic territory “is a deal that must happen” and uploaded photos of his eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., who was visiting Greenland….
Greenland
Maegan Vazquez at The Washington Post:
Trump says he will rename the Gulf of Mexico. Can he do that?
Donald Trump on Tuesday said the United States would change the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America, and the president-elect seemed to tie the prospective renaming to his long-standing grievances with Mexico’s handling of immigration, drug trafficking and trade.
“We’re going to be changing the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America,” Trump said at a news conference at his Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach, Florida. “ … What a beautiful name, and it’s appropriate.”
The president-elect subsequently decried the Mexican government for allowing migrants to “pour” into the United States, saying Mexico “can stop them and we’re going to put very serious tariffs on Mexico and Canada because Canada, they come through Canada, too.”
Trump provided no additional details about how he planned to implement the name change, but the comments sparked immediate questions about whether a president has the authority to rename an international body of water and prompted at least one Republican member of Congress to draft legislation.
That member of Congress was Marjorie Taylor Greene.
Here’s what we know about what Trump can and cannot do to rename the gulf….
The Gulf of Mexico is a 218,000-square-mile oceanic basin connected to the Caribbean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean through the Florida Straits and the Yucatán Channel. It spans from the eastern coast of Mexico and the southeastern coast of the United States to the western end of Cuba….
The Gulf of Mexico
The body of water has been known by many names, but European explorers and mapmakers have used the name “Gulf of Mexico” for at least 400 years….
There are existing mechanisms to rename places recognized by the federal government. However, if the federal name change becomes official, that does not mean that other nations will recognize it.
The U.S. Board on Geographic Names is a federal interagency organization that is responsible for maintaining uniform geographic name usage throughout the federal government. The board operates under the interior secretary. The board’s Foreign Names Committee is responsible for standardizing foreign place names. The committee is composed of representatives from federal agencies, including several appointees specializing in geography and cartography. Members are appointed every two years.
While the BGN does not create names for geographical features, it approves or rejects names proposed by others based on its established policies. A recent example of the board’s work includes approval of replacement names for all features that included the word “squaw,” which is used as a derogatory slur toward NativeAmerican women. The name changes were made after an order by Interior Secretary Deb Haaland in 2021. Haaland is the first Native person to serve as a Cabinet secretary.
Trump probably doesn’t know that Mexico and Canada, along with the U.S., are each parts of “America.”–that is, the continent of North America. Of course changing the name is ridiculous and idiotic, but so is Trump.
During the “press conference,” Trump also said that the changes Mark Zuckerberg is making to his social media platforms are in response to his (Trump’s) threats to imprison the the billionaire social media owner.
NBC News: Meta is ending its fact-checking program in favor of a ‘community notes’ system similar to X’s.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced a series of major changes to the company’s moderation policies and practices Tuesday, citing a shifting political and social landscape and a desire to embrace free speech.
Zuckerberg said Meta will end its fact-checking program with trusted partners and replace it with a community-driven system similar to X’s Community Notes.
The company is also changing its content moderation policies around political topics and undoing changes that reduced the amount of political content in user feeds, Zuckerberg said.
The changes will affect Facebook and Instagram, two of the largest social media platforms in the world, each boasting billions of users, as well as Threads.
“We’re going to get back to our roots and focus on reducing mistakes, simplifying our policies and restoring free expression on our platforms,” Zuckerberg said in a video. “More specifically, here’s what we’re going to do. First, we’re going to get rid of fact-checkers and replace them with community notes similar to X, starting in the U.S.”
Zuckerberg pointed to the election as a major influence on the company’s decision and criticized “governments and legacy media” for, he alleged, pushing “to censor more and more.”
“The recent elections also feel like a cultural tipping point towards, once again, prioritizing speech,” he said. “So we’re going to get back to our roots and focus on reducing mistakes, simplifying our policies and restoring free expression on our platforms.”
So what is this going to look like?
Cath Virginia at The Verge:
Here are some of the horrible things that you can now say on Facebook.
Meta overhauled its approach to US moderation on Tuesday, ditching fact-checking, announcing a plan to move its trust and safety teams, and perhaps most impactfully, updating its Hateful Conduct policy. As reported by Wired, a lot of text has been updated, added, or removed, but here are some of the changes that jumped out at us.
These two sections outlining speech (written or visual) are new additions:
We do allow allegations of mental illness or abnormality when based on gender or sexual orientation, given political and religious discourse about transgenderism and homosexuality and common non-serious usage of words like “weird.”
We do allow content arguing for gender-based limitations of military, law enforcement, and teaching jobs. We also allow the same content based on sexual orientation, when the content is based on religious beliefs.
Another section that specifically banned making dehumanizing references to transgender or non-binary people as “it” or referring to women “as household objects or property or objects in general” has been removed entirely.
The opening statement about what the policies are “designed to allow room for” that previously listed only health or positive support groups has changed too (new additions marked in bold):
People sometimes use sex- or gender-exclusive language when discussing access to spaces often limited by sex or gender, such as access to bathrooms, specific schools, specific military, law enforcement, or teaching roles, and health or support groups. Other times, they call for exclusion or use insulting language in the context of discussing political or religious topics, such as when discussing transgender rights, immigration, or homosexuality. Finally, sometimes people curse at a gender in the context of a romantic break-up. Our policies are designed to allow room for these types of speech.
The section that specifically banned targeting people or groups “with claims that they have or spread the novel coronavirus” has also been removed.
Read the rest at The Verge.
One more from Claire Duffy at CNN:
Calling women ‘household objects’ now permitted on Facebook after Meta updated its guidelines.
Meta on Tuesday announced sweeping changes to how it moderates content that will roll out in the coming months, including doing away with professional fact checking. But the company also quietly updated its hateful conduct policy, adding new types of content users can post on the platform, effective immediately.
Users are now allowed to, for example, refer to “women as household objects or property” or “transgender or non-binary people as ‘it,’” according to a section of the policy prohibiting such speech that was crossed out. A new section of the policy notes Meta will allow “allegations of mental illness or abnormality when based on gender or sexual orientation, given political and religious discourse about transgenderism and homosexuality.”
Previously, such comments would have been subject to removal under the policy. The changes to Meta’s hateful conduct policy were first reported by Wired.
Meta had hinted in its announcement about its content moderation policy changes Tuesday morning that it would get rid of restrictions on certain topics, such as immigration and gender identity, and allow more political discussions. But the updated policy shows just how quickly Meta is moving to enact CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s vision for “free expression.”
Meta on Tuesday also announced it would do away with its network of independent fact checkers in the United States and will instead rely on user-generated “community notes” to add context to posts. It also said it would adjust its automated systems that scan for policy violations, which it says have resulted in “too much content being censored that shouldn’t have been.” The systems will now be focused only on extreme violations such as child sexual exploitation and terrorism.
Basically, it’s open season on women and LBGTQ+ people.
Please take care of yourselves today and every day for the next 4 years.
Did you like this post? Please share it with your friends:
Posted: July 8, 2023 | Author: bostonboomer | Filed under: cat art, caturday, Donald Trump | Tags: Elon Musk, Jamal Kashoggi, John Kelly, Lesley Van Houten, Lisa Page, Manson murders, Mark Zuckerberg, Miles Taylor, Peter Strzok, Rudy Giuliani, Threads, Twitter |
Sea cat art by Heider Taillefer
Happy Caturday!!
I’m in a surreal frame of mind this morning. I’m not sure what’s wrong with me. I have a sore throat and I feel kind of lightheaded. I hope I’m not getting sick. Maybe it’s just because I’m reading a surreal book, The Secret History, by Donna Tartt. I know I should have read it years ago, but somehow I never got around to it. It’s very different from what I expected. I knew it was about a murder involving upper middle class classics students at a college in Vermont. I didn’t expect it to be full of slapstick humor. It’s somewhat disconcerting, but very well written. It has definitely taken my mind off the horror of U.S. politics.
Speaking of surreal murders, 73-year-old Lesley Van Houten is going to be let out of prison. NBC News: Manson family killer Leslie Van Houten will be paroled, lawyer says, after Gov. Newsom drops fight.
Leslie Van Houten, a follower of Charles Manson who was convicted in two killings, will be paroled in weeks, her attorney said Friday after California’s governor said he would not challenge it at the State Supreme Court.
“She’s thrilled,” Van Houten’s attorney Nancy Tetreault said.\Van Houten, now 73, will be paroled in the next several weeks after spending more than five decades in prison, Tetreault said.
An appeals court ruled in May that Van Houten is eligible for parole, reversing a decision by Gov. Gavin Newsom to reject parole.
Newsom, who has repeatedly blocked efforts for Van Houten to be paroled, had until Monday to file a challenge with the state Supreme Court.
Newsom, a Democrat, said Friday he would not do so….
Van Houten is serving a life sentence after being convicted along with other cult members of the 1969 killings of Leno and Rosemary LaBianca in Los Angeles.
A jury convicted Van Houten in 1971 of two counts of first-degree murder and one count of conspiracy to commit murder. She was initially sentenced to death, but that was overturned and she has spent 52 years in state prison.
Van Houten has been before the state Board of Parole Hearings more than 20 times. The board has recommended Van Houten be paroled five times since 2016, according to the state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.
She threw her life away back in 1969 when she chose to follow instructions from Manson and his bloodthirsty cult member Susan Atkins. I doubt if she’s a danger to society at this point.
Paris Through My Window, by Marc Chagall, 1913
There’s a bit of Trump investigation news this morning from New York Times both-sides reporter Michael Schmidt: Trump Asked About I.R.S. Inquiry of F.B.I. Officials, Ex-Aide Says Under Oath.
John F. Kelly, who served as former President Donald J. Trump’s second White House chief of staff, said in a sworn statement that Mr. Trump had discussed having the Internal Revenue Service and other federal agencies investigate two F.B.I. officials involved in the investigation into his campaign’s ties to Russia.
Mr. Kelly said that his recollection of Mr. Trump’s comments to him was based on notes that he had taken at the time in 2018. Mr. Kelly provided copies of his notes to lawyers for one of the F.B.I. officials, who made the sworn statement public in a court filing.
“President Trump questioned whether investigations by the Internal Revenue Service or other federal agencies should be undertaken into Mr. Strzok and/or Ms. Page,” Mr. Kelly said in the statement. “I do not know of President Trump ordering such an investigation. It appeared, however, that he wanted to see Mr. Strzok and Ms. Page investigated.”
Mr. Kelly’s assertions were disclosed on Thursday in a statement that was filed in connection with lawsuits brought by Peter Strzok, who was the lead agent in the F.B.I.’s Russia investigation, and Lisa Page, a former lawyer in the bureau, against the Justice Department for violating their privacy rights when the Trump administration made public text messages between them.
I hope Page and Strzok finally get their revenge on Trump.
The disclosures from Mr. Kelly, made under penalty of perjury, demonstrate the extent of Mr. Trump’s interest in harnessing the law enforcement and investigative powers of the federal government to target his perceived enemies. In the aftermath of Richard M. Nixon’s presidency, Congress made it illegal for a president to “directly or indirectly” order an I.R.S. investigation or audit.
The New York Times reported last July that two of Mr. Trump’s greatest perceived enemies — James B. Comey, whom he fired as F.B.I. director, and Mr. Comey’s deputy, Andrew G. McCabe — were the subject of the same type of highly unusual and invasive I.R.S. audit.
It is not known whether the I.R.S. investigated Mr. Strzok or Ms. Page. But Mr. Strzok became a subject in the investigation conducted by the special counsel John Durham into how the F.B.I. investigated Mr. Trump’s campaign. Neither Mr. Strzok nor Ms. Page was charged in connection with that investigation, which former law enforcement officials and Democrats have criticized as an effort to carry out Mr. Trump’s vendetta against the bureau. Mr. Strzok is also suing the department for wrongful termination.
Mr. Strzok and Ms. Page exchanged text messages that were critical of Mr. Trump and were later made public by Rod J. Rosenstein, then the deputy attorney general under Mr. Trump, as he faced heavy criticism from Republicans on Capitol Hill who were trying to find ways to undermine him.
Katzenworld, Femke Hiemstra
NBC has an interesting excerpt from the new book by former Trump official Miles Taylor: White House officials worried Trump showed reporters classified material while in office, new book recounts.
A forthcoming book by an ex-Trump administration aide describes an episode in which officials worried that then-President Donald Trump was cavalier in his handling of classified information while talking to reporters, according to a copy obtained by NBC News.
Miles Taylor, who was a top aide to Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, writes about the 2018 episode in a book set to be published this month. As a sitting president at the time, Trump had broad powers to declassify information. Yet the incident Taylor describes suggests that his aides still believed he needed to show more care toward state secrets — an issue that landed him in legal peril after he left office and took sensitive records with him….
Trump was still president when the episode Taylor described unfolded Oct. 18, 2018. Taylor writes that he was in a private meeting in the West Wing with John Bolton, who was then Trump’s national security adviser.
Then-White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders came into Bolton’s office and described an interview that Trump had given in the Oval Office, according to Taylor’s book, “Blowback.” (It’s common for White House press aides to sit in when the president gives interviews.)
Trump had been talking to the reporters about Jamal Khashoggi, the dissident and journalist who was killed that month by Saudi assassins in Turkey.
Sanders told Bolton that the president had picked up classified documents relating to intelligence on Khashoggi’s death and displayed them, Taylor writes, but that the reporters were unlikely to have been able to read the text.
Bolton gasped at first, but “breathed a sigh of relief” when Sanders told him there had been no cameras in the room, according to the book.
Still, “We were all disturbed by the lapse in protocol and poor protection of classified information,” Taylor writes.
It looks like Rudy Giuliani will finally be disbarred in DC. CBS News: Rudy Giuliani should be disbarred for false election fraud claims, D.C. review panel says.
A Washington, D.C., Bar Association review panel is recommending former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani be disbarred in Washington for his handling of litigation challenging the 2020 election on behalf of then-President Trump.
By Daniel Ryan
Giuliani “claimed massive election fraud but had no evidence,” wrote the three-lawyer panel in a report released Friday, regarding the errors and unsupported claims in a Pennsylvania lawsuit he argued seeking to overturn the Republican president’s loss to Democrat Joe Biden.
Between Election Day and the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol, Giuliani and other Trump lawyers repeatedly pressed claims of election fraud that were almost uniformly rejected by federal and state courts. He’s the third lawyer who could lose his ability to practice law over what he did for Trump: John Eastman faces disbarment in California, and Lin Wood this week surrendered his license in Georgia.
“Mr. Giuliani’s effort to undermine the integrity of the 2020 presidential election has helped destabilize our democracy,” wrote the three lawyers on the panel, Robert C. Bernius, Carolyn Haynesworth-Murrell and Jay A. Brozost.
The panel’s report will now go to the D.C. Court of Appeals for a final decision.
How much lower can this man sink. It’s difficult to believe that he was once a DOJ official and then U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, not to mention mayor of NYC.
The Zuckerberg-Musk fight over the new Threads social media app is pretty entertaining. Here’s the latest:
The Guardian: Zuckerberg’s ‘Twitter killer’ Threads hits 70m sign-ups in two days.
Mark Zuckerberg’s “Twitter-killer” Threads has reached 70m sign-ups in less than 48 hours, as it more than doubled its growth from its first day on app stores.
The new microblogging platform was launched in 100 countries this week . It immediately accumulated significant numbers of users, hitting more than 30 million within its first 24 hours, apparently making it the fastest downloaded app ever. On Friday, however, Zuckerberg announced on his Threads account that the user total had more than doubled that figure.
Marc Chagall, Le Poète
“70 million sign ups on Threads as of this morning. Way beyond our expectations,” he wrote. Threads launched around the world at 7pm EST in the US on Wednesday.
Elon Musk’s Twitter has reacted to the new rival with a formal threat to sue the “copycat” app over alleged violation of its “intellectual property rights”….
Zuckerberg, chief executive of Threads and Instagram owner Meta, has said he wants to make “kindness” a focus of the app’s appeal, in a reference to concerns that the rival platform, which has more than 250 million users, has become too hostile for some.
“The goal is to keep it friendly as it expands. I think it’s possible and will ultimately be the key to its success,” he wrote on his Threads account. “That’s one reason why Twitter never succeeded as much as I think it should have, and we want to do it differently.”
That seems unlikely, knowing human nature, but we can hope.
Mashable: Threads backtracks flagging right-wing users for spreading disinformation.
If you regularly spread “false information” online, Threads already knows. The platform apparently flagged those accounts on launch, warning users that considered following them, before backtracking.
When Threads launched on Wednesday, numerous right-wing users shared(opens in a new tab) their dissatisfaction(opens in a new tab) with Twitter’s biggest competitor — on Twitter of course — over having their accounts flagged for disinformation.
As of Friday, however, it seems the warning label on accounts that reported the issue has since disappeared….
“This account has repeatedly posted false information that was reviewed by independent fact-checkers or went against our Community Guidelines,” read the label that would pop up when another user attempted follow these accounts.
The wording on the label is similar to a warning prompt that appears on Meta services like Facebook and Instagram. As Threads is so new and still so tightly connected to Instagram, it appears Meta used an account’s existing reputation to inform Threads users of their history.
Later on, Andy Stone of Meta, said the warning labels had been posted by mistake and they were removed from right wing accounts.
Tayor Lorenz at The Washington Post: How Twitter lost its place as the global town square.
Alex Pearlman, a stand-up comedian in Philadelphia, woke up one morning in June and turned on the local news. A portion of Interstate 95 had collapsed. Pearlman thought it was the type of thing people should know about.
Five years ago, he would have turned to Twitter to spread the news. But on that Sunday morning, he picked up his phone and made a TikTok — which quickly amassed more than 2 million views.
By Michael Bridges
A decade ago, Twitter rose to prominence by casting itself as a “global town square,” a space where anyone could reach millions of people overnight. The platform was pivotal in facilitating large social movements, such as the Arab Spring protests in the Middle East and the Black Lives Matter protests over police violence. In a recent email to staff, Twitter’s new chief executive, Linda Yaccarino, repeated this characterization, calling the site “a global town square for communication.”
But Twitter no longer serves this function. Thanks to a string of disastrous missteps over the past year by new owner Elon Musk — punctuated by the decision last week to cap the number of posts users can view — Twitter is hemorrhaging users and relevance. While Meta’s new Threads app is making an impressive debut, most social media experts say TikTok reigns as the new global town square and has held that role for quite a while.
“Twitter is definitely not anyone’s public square. Not anymore,” said Chris Messina, who on Thursday posted the hashtag #DeadTwitter on Threads. Twitter is “Elon Musk’s private playground where he’s about to charge everyone … for entry and access #DeadTwitter.”
On Musk’s failed “leadership”:
Since taking the helm last fall promising to champion “free speech,” Musk has alienated users with a relentless stream of updates that are hostile to the app’s heaviest users. He removed all legacy check marks — Twitter’s years-old way to assure users that posters are really who they say they are — sowing distrust and leading to significant financial consequences for major brands that were easily impersonated under the new system. He then sold blue check marks, which ensured amplification to anyone willing to pay $8 a month, allowing scammers and grifters to crowd out the replies to popular tweets. Interesting content has been down-ranked in favor of pay-to-play blue check mark replies, some of which push crypto scams and pornography.
Musk also flooded the “for you” timeline with his own tweets, driving away users who came to the service to follow friends and interests outside of the platform’s billionaire owner.
“Before, if I saw someone was verified, they’d have to have done something of note to get it,” said Ryan Fay, a theater director in Atlanta. “Now, I can’t trust anyone who claims to be a journalist and has a check mark because they paid for it, and I don’t know if they have any credentials or knowledge. Seeing a blue check now means this person is using Twitter to try to sell me something or some sort of scamming.”
Musk also fired Twitter’s trust and safety team, allowing harassment and abuse to explode across the platform unchecked. He’s banned prominent journalists and liberal activists. He’s railed against LGTBQ people and declared the word “cisgender” a slur. If that wasn’t enough to drive the most dedicated Twitter users to greener pastures, last week he began limiting the number of tweets users could read, blocking nonpaying users from being served more than 600 tweets per day.
There’s much more on Musk’s failures at the WaPo link. For now, it feels so satisfying to have an alternative to the mess Musk made at Twitter. We’ll have to wait and see how Zuckerberg does with Threads.
Have a great Caturday everyone!!
Did you like this post? Please share it with your friends:
Posted: July 6, 2023 | Author: bostonboomer | Filed under: Afternoon Reads, Barack Obama, Donald Trump, Media, The Media SUCKS | Tags: disinformation, District Judge Terry Doughty, heat wave, Mar-a-Lago search, Mark Zuckerberg, stolen documents case, summer, Taylor Taranto, Threads by Instagram, Twitter |
Good Day!!
Boston Skyline, by Diane Bell
It has been unseasonably cool here in the Boston area for much of this spring and early summer, but now we’re going into a heat wave like most of the rest of the country.
Thank goodness my heat pump is working very well. It was 90 degrees yesterday, and my apartment stayed cool. Today it is already 90 degrees and it’s not 11AM yet. I feel so fortunate to be living here in my nice subsidized elderly apartment.
When I think back to the summers in my old unairconditioned house, I wonder how I managed. On 90 degree days, I basically just had to sit in front of my fans until the sun stopped beating down on the roof after about 4:30PM. I really feel for Dakinikat, who has been experiencing day after day like that.
It’s still sort of a slow news week, because of the holiday, but it’s beginning to get busier.
For those of us who have been long-time Twitter addicts, this has been an unsettling week. It really looks like Elon Musk has managed to kill Twitter this time, and many alternatives are popping up. Last night I signed up for Threads by Instagram. I’m hoping it will approach being what Twitter used to be, although I don’t really trust Mark Zuckerberg. But I trust Jack Dorsey even less. So far, he’s not letting me get into Bluesky, and I’ve decided I don’t want to use his new app, since he’ll probably end up selling it to another billionaire idiot.
The New York Times: Threads, Instagram’s ‘Twitter Killer,’ Has Arrived.
After months of speculation and secrecy, Mark Zuckerberg’s long-rumored competitor app to Twitter is here.
The new app, Threads, was unveiled on Wednesday as a companion to Instagram, the popular photo-sharing network that Mr. Zuckerberg’s company, Meta, bought more than a decade ago. If Instagram executives get their way, Threads will also replace rival Twitter, with some techies referring to it as a “Twitter killer.”
The rollout of Threads ramps up the rivalry between Mr. Zuckerberg and Elon Musk, who bought Twitter last year. Mr. Musk has changed the experience of Twitter by tinkering with its algorithm and other features, and most recently imposed temporary limits on how many tweets people could read when using the app, inciting outrage.
Many tech companies have tried capitalizing on Twitter’s turmoil in recent months. But Threads has a leg up, backed by Meta’s deep pockets and Instagram’s enormous user base of more than two billion monthly active users around the world.
In a post to his Threads account on Wednesday, Mr. Zuckerberg said: “I think there should be a public conversations app with 1 billion+ people on it. Twitter has had the opportunity to do this but hasn’t nailed it. Hopefully we will.” He later said that Threads achieved 10 million sign-ups within seven hours of its launch.
Mr. Musk weighed in, saying he was not impressed by Threads and claiming he had canceled his Instagram account. “It is infinitely preferable to be attacked by strangers on Twitter, than indulge in the false happiness of hide-the-pain Instagram,” he wrote on Twitter.
Read more details at the NYT link.
Summer in the Park, by Susan Sternau
NBC News: What you need to know about Threads, Instagram’s new Twitter competitor.
Instagram’s Threads app, a text-based social media platform poised to become Twitter’s latest competitor, is now available to users in more than 100 countries.
The app, which was released Wednesday evening, a day ahead of its scheduled debut, enables users to sign up straight from their Instagram accounts. That means that once it is launched worldwide, more than 2 billion monthly active users may import their accounts into Threads….
The app opens up to a scrollable feed of short-form text limited to 500 characters a post, with the ability to add individual or carousel photos and videos. Posts will include content from accounts users follow, as well as from creators suggested by the platform’s recommendation algorithm. Viewers can engage by liking, commenting, reposting — including quoting a post — and sharing to their Instagram story or feed.
While most features mimic those of Twitter, its user interface design resembles Instagram’s, with the same heart, comment and share buttons and similarly placed tabs.
Once logged in, new users who have Instagram accounts are told their account must retain the same usernames, but are able to a different bio and link to their profiles. Verified Instagram users will take their check marks to Threads, as well. Users can then choose to follow in bulk all accounts they already follow on Instagram, which includes pre-following anyone who has not yet joined Threads….
Accounts that users have already blocked on Instagram will also be automatically blocked on Threads. Those who wish to limit interactions can choose whether to allow replies from everyone, accounts they follow or mentions — users whom they directly tagged in a thread — only. They can also choose to restrict mentions of themselves to just accounts they follow or to disallow them entirely.
More details at the link.
There’s new information about the Trump stolen documents case; the DOJ has unsealed previously unseen parts of the affidavit for the search of Mar-a-Lago.
CNN: Justice Department had video of boxes being moved at Mar-a-Lago before FBI search, unredacted document shows.
The Justice Department has made public more about the significant photographic and video evidence they collected last summer from Mar-a-Lago after the Trump presidency, in a newly released version of the investigative record that supported the FBI search of the resort.
While the details match much of what was included in last month’s indictment of Donald Trump and his co-defendant Walt Nauta, the less-redacted search warrant affidavit reveals the extent of what prosecutors knew before asking to search the Florida property for documents or other evidence last summer.
Summer in the City, by Olena Maksymova
The search affidavit, which still has several pages of redactions, describes with more public detail what prosecutors could see on spring 2022 surveillance footage from multiple angles outside a basement storage room where classified documents were kept in boxes at Mar-a-Lago.
The affidavit also includes at least one photo of boxes stacked in a room and captures how investigators believed boxes from Trump’s presidency were “relocated” or had been moved around.
“Video footage reflects that evidence has been moved recently,” prosecutors wrote in the court record. “It cannot be seen on the video footage where the boxes were moved when they were taken from the storage room area, and accordingly, the current location of the boxes that were removed from the storage room area but not returned to it is unknown.”
The affidavit said that the FBI’s review of security footage provided by the Trump Organization showed a person identified as “witness 5” moving boxes of documents around the estate throughout 2022, including on June 1, 2022, when he’s “observed carrying eleven brown cardboard boxes out the ANTEROOM entrance. One box did not have a lid on it and appeared to contain papers.”
Witness 5 is not named in the document. Nauta was accused in the indictment of obstruction and lying to investigators. Nauta is expected to plead not guilty in federal court in Miami on Thursday. Trump has pleaded not guilty.
“The day after that, on June 2, 2022, WITNESS 5 is observed moving twenty-five to thirty boxes, some of which were brown cardboard boxes and others of which were Bankers boxes consistent with the description of the FPOTUS BOXES, into the entrance of the ANTEROOM,” the filing said.
That seems pretty incriminating.
Remember how the press reacted when there were peaceful demonstrations outside the homes of SCOTUS justices? And when a troubled man showed up near Brett Kavanaugh’s house with a gun and then turned himself in to police without doing anything, the outrage was loud and long. I’ve been wondering why there hasn’t been more reporting on the crazy guy who showed up outside the Obamas’ home in DC with lots of guns and bombs. And even more creepy, he knew the address because it was posted on line by Donald Trump! Well finally, this event is getting a bit of attention.
Spencer S. Hsu at The Washington Post: U.S.: Man with guns near Obama home threatened McCarthy, Raskin.
A Navy veteran arrested with guns near former president Barack Obama’s house in Washington had recently recorded himself making threatening statements regarding House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), Rep. Jamie B. Raskin (D-Md.) and a federal facility housing a nuclear research reactor in suburban Maryland, prosecutors said Wednesday.
Summer in the City (NY), by Julian Barrow
U.S. prosecutors asked a judge to jail Taylor Taranto, 37, pending trial, saying that the QAnon conspiracy theorist showed up near Obama’s home shortly after Donald Trump posted on his social media platform what he claimed was Obama’s address. Taranto was armed, dangerous and in the grip of delusional thinking, prosecutors said, and had successfully eluded law enforcement for nearly a day before his arrest June 29 in a wooded area near Washington’s exclusive Kalorama neighborhood.
“Taranto is a direct and serious threat to the public. Taranto’s own words and actions demonstrate that he is a direct threat to multiple political figures as well as the public at large,” Assistant U.S. Attorneys Allison K. Ethen and Colin Cloherty wrote in a 26-page detention memo. “The risk that Taranto poses if released is high, and the severity of the consequences that could result are catastrophic.”
Authorities searched for Taranto before June 28, but he was living in his van, and his lack of a fixed address frustrated efforts to find him, prosecutors said. Law enforcement “escalated efforts to locate Taranto and increased resources to assist in the search” after his alleged threats that day, but were unsuccessful before he turned up near Obama’s residence.
Read more at the WaPo. It’s quite a long and detailed story.
Finally, the strange decision by a Trump-appointed judge in Louisiana is getting quite a bit of attention in the media.
The Hill: Court ruling prompts fears of ‘Wild West of disinformation.’
An order limiting the Biden administration’s communication with social media companies could make it harder to curb disinformation as the 2024 election nears.
A federal judge Tuesday curtailed communication between certain Biden administration agencies and social media companies after a GOP-led challenge to efforts to combat disinformation, arguing attempts to do so violated protected speech.
The ruling left experts concerned about a “chilling effect” on attempts to moderate false information online.
“If we end up with basically no meaningful content moderation, then it is going to be a Wild West of disinformation,” said Darrell West, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution’s Center for Technology Innovation.
Summer in the City, Edward Hopper
Two Republican state attorneys general argued that the Biden administration “coordinated and colluded with social-media platforms to identify disfavored speakers, viewpoints, and content.” The result, they said, was a “campaign of censorship” executed by the administration.
U.S. District Judge Terry Doughty, a Trump appointee, ruled in their favor, ordering that Biden administration officials cannot contact social media companies relating to “in any manner the removal, deletion, suppression, or reduction of content containing protected free speech posted on social-media platforms.”
Officials from the Department of Health and Human Services, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Department of Justice, the State Department and the FBI were told to cut those communications with the companies.
The case had primarily taken aim at attempts to curtail disinformation during the COVID-19 pandemic, which Republicans decried as a violation of the First Amendment.
Raw Story: DOJ appeals ‘crazy’ Biden social media ruling ‘lightning fast’: legal expert.
Former federal prosecutor Harry Litman tweeted that a Trump-appointed federal judge’s injunction that blocks the Biden administration from communicating with social media companies was crazy “in substance and breadth,” noting the DOJ didn’t waste any time in filing its “lightning fast” appeal.
“Feds obviously know it’s nuts & dangerous,” Litman added.
Judge Terry A. Doughty issued the injunction in response to a lawsuit brought by Republican attorneys general of Louisiana and Missouri, who argued that the government overreached in efforts to stop the spread of vaccine disinformation and baseless allegations of election fraud.
The ruling is widely viewed as a legal win for conservatives.
Summer in the City, by Aniko Hencz
The attorneys general behind the lawsuit that prompted the injunction contend that the Biden administration is behind a “sprawling federal ‘Censorship Enterprise’” that aims to pressure social media companies to censor posts expressing controversial political views and conservatives in particular, the report said.
The Biden administration argued that such communications were needed for public health and safety reasons, noting that the social media platforms have been used to propagate disinformation about COVID vaccines and the 2020 election.
The administration sought “necessary and responsible actions to protect public health, safety, and security” amid the pandemic and the conspiracy-fueled election dispute, Bloomberg News reports, noting that the DOJ plans to request that the judge’s order be put on hold during the appeal.
The Washington Post’s Cat Zakrzewski describes the injunction as an “extraordinary” ruling that “could upend years of efforts to enhance coordination between the government and social media companies.
Zoe Tillman and Emily Birnbaum at Bloomberg: Biden Appeal Opens a New Front in Battle Over Internet Speech.
The Biden administration’s battle with Republican-led states over free-speech limits escalated with its appeal of a judge’s sweeping order barring federal officials and agencies from communicating with social media companies over postings they deem objectionable. It’s the latest example of the judiciary flexing its muscles in cases testing the bounds of the First Amendment online.
The US Justice Department filed a notice of appeal in federal court in Louisiana on Wednesday, signaling its intent to take the fight to the 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans.
The DOJ also plans to ask the court to put the judge’s order on hold during the appeal, according to a person familiar with the case. The case could swiftly land before the US Supreme Court if the government’s request is rejected.
Courts have played a star role mediating fights in recent years over how tech giants moderate what goes on their platforms. With federal law largely shielding companiesagainst being sued over what’s posted online, challengers have increasingly shifted the legal fight to the constitutional arena, probing the relationship between the government and the private sector.
US District Judge Terry Doughty’s injunction on Tuesday represents a break with judges who have been wary of extending the First Amendment’s speech protections to content decisions made by companies, even in situations where government officials tried to exert influence, said Genevieve Lakier, a constitutional law expert at the University of Chicago Law School.
Read the rest at Bloomberg.
Two more good articles on this insane decision:
Harry Litman and Lawrence Tribe at Just Security: Restricting the Government from Speaking to Tech Companies Will Spread Disinformation and Harm Democracy.
Philip Bump at The Washington Post: A deeply ironic reinforcement of right-wing misinformation.
That’s all I have for you today. I hope everyone is managing to stay safe in the ongoing hot weather.
Did you like this post? Please share it with your friends:
Posted: July 4, 2023 | Author: bostonboomer | Filed under: just because | Tags: cocaine in White House, Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, mass shootings, Tweetdeck, Twitter |
Happy July Fourth!!
I don’t feel comfortable calling this “Independence Day,” since we are in the process of losing our freedom and autonomy, thanks to the ultra-right Supreme Court.
Jill Lawrence at MSNBC.com
Despite the promises of America’s founding documents, on Independence Day 2023, justice, the “general welfare,” “equal protection of the laws” and “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” are all at risk. The Supreme Court, conservative governors and gerrymandered state legislatures are racing to shrink fundamental rights and freedoms, enabled and empowered by structural inequities built into the Constitution. The result is that tens of millions of Americans are being deprived of rights that other Americans have.
The scale of the disparity is frightening and growing, taking us ever further from America’s founding ideal that “all men are created equal” and its continuing journey toward equal rights for all.
The marquee setback came last year with the high court’s Dobbs decision, which erased a constitutional right that had been in place for nearly half a century. A year later, free to do as they pleased, 14 states fully banned abortion, and a 15th, Georgia, banned it after six weeks of pregnancy (before many women know they are pregnant). At the same time, 20 states where abortion is legal added protections over the past year.
While abortion is a particularly stark example of the democracy divide, U.S. courts and state legislatures are advancing inequality of rights in countless other ways: from last week’s Supreme Court decisions allowing a prospective wedding website designer to refuse services to hypothetical same-sex couples and removing race from the many factors colleges and universities use to assemble diverse student bodies to states’ trying to restrict and ban medical care for transgender people, discussions of gay issues in classrooms and which books can be accessed in libraries.
The solution in many cases is federal legislation, which would require, at minimum, Democrats to reclaim a House majority next year. The party would also have to elect 50 or more senators willing to abolish the filibuster, at least in cases when America’s most sacred promises are threatened.
Read the rest at the MSNBC link.
The one “freedom” the right wingers are leaving untouched is the so-called Second Amendment right to own weapons of war, and there were two more mass shootings overnight.
From CNN:
A shooting that erupted just before midnight Monday in Fort Worth, Texas, left at least three dead and eight others wounded, police said.
Ten of the victims are adults and one a minor, according to a news release from the Fort Worth Police Department’s homicide unit.
Officers discovered multiple people shot in a parking lot in the Horne Street area of the Como neighborhood, police said. Several victims were brought to local hospitals by private vehicles, while others were transported by ambulance, authorities said. One victim was pronounced dead at the scene….
It’s too early to tell if the shooting was gang related, a domestic dispute, or something else, police said.
There was a large crowd in the neighborhood when police responded, Murray said.
“Traditionally, the Como neighborhood, July 3 is their big celebration,” Murray said. “They have their parade, and July 3 in the evening, they gather up as a neighborhood and come together.” [….]
The deadly gunfire in Fort Worth is one of at least six mass shootings in the first three days of July and one at least 341 mass shootings in the nation this year, according to the Gun Violence Archive. The archive, like CNN, defines a mass shooting as one in which four or more people are shot, not including the shooter.
From Vanity Fair:
Five people were killed and two children injured Monday evening after a heavily-armed gunman opened fire in a Southwest Philadelphia neighborhood, police said. The suspect, who has been taken into custody, was clad in a bulletproof vest and had an “AR-type rifle,” multiple magazines, a handgun and a police scanner, Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw said in a press conference at the scene.
Speaking Tuesday before a Fourth of July ceremony, Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney said that the dealer who sold firearms to the alleged shooter “should be sued until they’re out of business.” Kenney called on the family members of the shooting victims to find a law firm and “take these gun dealers down.
“They don’t care, all they care about is money,” he said. “The carnage that they allow to happen is just ridiculous.”
President Joe Biden addressed the shooting—the latest in a spree of mass killings over the past few days—late Tuesday morning. “ Today, Jill and I grieve for those who have lost their lives and, as our nation celebrates Independence Day, we pray for the day when our communities will be free from gun violence,” Biden said in a statement, which called on state governments and Congressional leaders to “address the epidemic of gun violence that is tearing our communities apart. ”
“It is within our power to once again ban assault weapons and high-capacity magazines, to require safe storage of guns, to end gun manufacturers’ immunity from liability, and to enact universal background checks,” he said.
The Philadelphia shooting spree unfolded over multiple streets at around 8:30 p.m. As officers were assessing the initial victims, they heard additional gunshots, which led them to the shooter, a 40-year-old man. One of the victims was chased into his home and shot to death in his living room; police found bullet casings outside the home.
There was a little bit of excitement at the White House on Sunday night.
From The Washington Post:
A preliminary test indicated that the white powder found inside the White House Sunday evening, prompting a brief evacuation, was cocaine, according to two officials familiar with the matter and the recording of a dispatch from a D.C. fire crew that responded to the incident.
A spokesman for the Secret Service, Anthony Guglielmi, said the substance is undergoingfurthertesting to determine what it is, and authorities are looking into how it got into the White House. He said the D.C. fire department determined the substance did not present a threat.
The discovery prompted an elevated security alert and a brief evacuation of the executive mansion, Guglielmi said. He said President Biden was not in the White House at the time. Guglielmi said there is “an investigation into the cause and manner” of how the substance entered the White House.
Guglielmi declined to say specifically where in the White House the substance was found or how it was packaged. He said it was found by members of the Uniformed Division of the Secret Service conducting routine rounds through the building.
In a dispatch with an 8:49 p.m. timestamp, a firefighter with the D.C. department’s hazardous materials team radioed the results of a test: “We have a yellow bar saying cocaine hydrochloride.”
The brief broadcast is logged on a website called openmhz.com, which allows people to listen to live and archived radio transmission from police and fire departments. One of the officials familiar with the investigation, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss an open case, said the 8:49 transmission was from the White House call Sunday night. The official described the amount of the substance as small.
I expect right wingers with now have a field day with Hunter Biden jokes.
It looks like Elon Musk has really broken Twitter this time. He apparently failed to pay his bill to Google for this month, and now he has begun to limit how many tweets people can view. He’s also requiring people to log in before they can look at tweets. In response, Google has begun removing all links to Titter posts. Of course, all of this will drive away advertisers, who base their decisions on the number of views their ads get. Now he is trying to make users pay for Tweetdeck.
From Gizmodo:
The hits don’t stop coming for Twitter users. This weekend, the platform’s owner Elon Musk claimed he’s imposing a limit to the number of tweets an average non-Blue user can read. In the aftermath, Twitter’s dashboard application Tweetdeck failed spectacularly.
In what he said was a bid to address the vague concepts of “data scraping” and “system manipulation,” Musk announced on the afternoon of July 1 that Twitter would be limiting the number of tweets users could read in a single day. According to his announcement, accounts that pay for Twitter Blue could read 6,000 posts per day, unverified accounts could read 600 posts per day, and newer unverified accounts were limited to just 300 posts per day. About an hour and a half later, he updated that those limits increased to 8,000, 600, and 300 tweets per day, respectively. Later that evening, Musk tweeted that those limits were once again raised to 10,000, 1,000, and 500 tweets, respectively.
TechCrunch reported this morning that this limiting was not without consequences. Aside from pissing off users, Twitter’s own Tweetdeck suffered outages. Tweetdeck allows a user to load tweets, notifications, messages, and likes all on one dashboard via multiple columns, and it’s likely that calls from Tweetdeck to Twitter were mangled as the platform’s backend limited users’ visibility. As the outlet notes, some Tweetdeck users reported that their home timeline loaded without fail while columns responsible for notifications and mentions were busted.
When asked for comment on the Tweetdeck outages, Twitter told Gizmodo “💩.”
Now Mark Zuckerberg is planning to launch a Twitter clone; but I can’t read the Wall Street Journal article, because it’s behind the paywall. I don’t think I’d want to join that one anyway.
That’s all I have for you today. I hope your holiday is safe and happy.
Did you like this post? Please share it with your friends:
peej
Carissa
bostonboomer
dakinikat
ecocatwoman
mablue2
Mama Lopez
peggysue22
quixote
skydancingguestblogger
Mona (aka Wonk the Vote)
Sky Dancing 
Recent Comments