Thursday Reads

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.