Attack of the Twitter Clones
Plus: Groups ask Supreme Court to say public officials can't block people, latest jobs report shows openings down, and more...
Tens of millions of people have now signed up for Threads, the new app meant to compete with Twitter. Whether this is the start of a new social media trend or a short-term blip is anyone's guess. As Twitter CEO Elon Musk and his new policies continue to alienate many longtime users of the site, an onslaught of apps with Twitter-like functions have been vying for the short-form, text-based platform crown. Several stand a decent chance—although it may be more likely that no social platform will again occupy the rarified space that Twitter and Facebook did.
Some of these apps, such as Post and T2, experienced very short-lived and relatively small waves of migration from Twitter. No one seems to think they are worth considering in the quest for a Twitter heir apparent.
Nor does Mastodon—a decentralized "fediverse" of Twitter-esque networks—appear capable of becoming The Next Twitter. It's a swell platform for fragmented, substantive, ongoing discourse among various niche audiences (much like Reddit) and folks who like the appeal of a non-corporate entity, with all that entails (no ads; less data collection; varying levels of content moderation, depending on which server you join). But many found the decentralized setup confusing, and Mastodon (intentionally) lacks many features that helped Twitter drive news and cultural outrage cycles.
The three most impactful Twitter competitors, right now, seem to be Threads, BlueSky, and Substack Notes. Each occupies a slightly different space, offering benefits and drawbacks for different audiences.
Threads is the newest entry here, having just launched on July 5, and it's the most corporate of the bunch, coming from Meta (the company behind Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp). Having the backing and expertise of a big and established tech company comes with some pluses and some minuses. Threads—which mimics Twitter in functionality (more on the nitty gritty of its functioning here)—looks great, has a big team in place to address issues, and has a built-in audience for attracting and onboarding users. Instagram this week has been prompting its users to join Threads, and anyone with an Instagram account can sign up for Threads with extremely minimal effort, automatically importing their Instagram username, photo, bio, and follows if they wish. By yesterday morning, the network it had 30 million sign-ups, according to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
But the same issues that plague Facebook and Instagram could be barriers to long-term success for Threads. Many people perceive the company and its platforms as uncool. They worry about its extensive harvesting of user data. They don't like Meta's heavy-handed content moderation policies (no female nipples is already a rule). Threads also doesn't have a version for desktop browsers yet, and it's not very customizable: You can't set things up so that you only see the accounts you follow. And on Facebook and Instagram, brand accounts are served up frequently while newsy and political content is downgraded—a strategy that, if carried over, could seriously hinder Threads becoming the discourse-driving, news-cycle-setting behemoth that Twitter has been.
BlueSky comes the closest to emulating the look and feel of early Twitter. Still in invite-only mode, the platform has a reputation for attracting weirdos (I say that lovingly), media types, the extremely online, and marginalized groups of the left-leaning sort (for instance, it's become immensely popular among transgender communities). Its base doesn't seem to take itself too seriously—posts are called "skeets," for example—and the aesthetic is "anything goes": Absurdist humor and racy pictures are both common. The vibe is communal, zany, fun, and a little anarchic, while its design and functionality mirror Twitter's very closely (unsurprisingly, since BlueSky was spun off from Twitter and since Twitter founder Jack Dorsey sits on its board). News and policy-related content is also prominent.
BlueSky certainly has the right audience, infrastructure, and backing to become big. But its growth is currently hampered by its invite-only status; its insular vibe may—as with early Twitter—be off-putting for mainstream audiences; and the wilderness spirit that users currently embrace may be hard to maintain at scale (at least not without attracting a boatload of ire from politicians and activists).
Notes is a new-ish function of the content-distribution platform Substack. Substack started out serving up newsletters—and this is still its core function—but it now offers other tools, including Notes and a way for content creators to create and distribute podcasts. It's a lot like blogging platforms of yore, except with a built-in option to charge a fee for subscriptions and a lot of easy-to-use options for different subscription levels. (Substack itself also strikes up content deals with a select cadre of newsletter creators.) The Notes interface is clean and simple and, like Twitter and BlueSky, Notes offers users the ability to post snippets of text and imagery; to follow and be followed; and to comment on, like, and "restack" others' posts. It also integrates seamlessly with Substack's other functions, so that it's easy (for instance) to share via Notes a Substack newsletter entry.
Notes has become popular among Substack newsletter creators and reader, and so the vibe tends to be collegial, intimate, and focused around discussion of writing and ideas. This makes it very appealing for a certain sort of social media user but perhaps unlikely to become a mass public square like Twitter, for both better and worse. And Substack seems more invested in supporting profitable and interesting newsletters and discussions about them than in finding any way possible to keep eyeballs endlessly on the platform. (To put it in extremely online terms: Notes has more Google Reader energy than Main Character of the Day energy.)
Independent of any characteristics of these particular platforms, there are barriers to any of them taking on the role that Twitter has held the past decade. First and foremost may be social media fatigue. A lot of people in 2023 feel like they're already on enough (too many?) different platforms. Rather than sign up for anything new, they may opt simply to stick it out with Twitter and/or Facebook—which, of course, many people still enjoy and derive value from—or taper off social media entirely.
Something with a clear-cut new angle (like TikTok when it came along) can clearly break through. Once established as a major player, a Twitter clone could probably do so too. But as things stand, how does anyone know which new platforms will and won't succeed? And until then, who wants to invest time and energy developing a community/following on an app that may fizzle out soon? Or hedge their bets and establish their presence on multiple apps, new and old?
The existence of so many options could keep any one platform from dominating. And perhaps that's for the best.
Part of what made Twitter and Facebook so appealing—and addicting—was the sense that its use was ubiquitous (even if, for Twitter especially, this was never the case). To opt out felt like you might miss out entirely on what was happening in politics, culture, and some of your favorite cultural communities. This same vibe made these mega-sites feel unbearable at times—they were engines of toxicity, pointless outrage loops and pile-ons, petty fights, misunderstandings, wasted time. It's what made politicians and institutions woefully attune to the whims and passions of Twitter and Facebook users, helping fuel cancel culture, corporate missteps, and bad political calculations.
The dominance of a few big tech platforms also helped drive political witch hunts. They enabled censorship (pressure a few big platforms to quash certain information, and a lot of the work was done) and government surveillance. And in the backlash, bad policy ideas were sold as sticking it to "big tech" even when their negative effects would actually reverberate around the rest of the internet too.
Twitter may never return to its old glory and ignominy. While Threads or BlueSky or one of the others may yet become the "new Twitter," there's a strong possibility that none of these Twitter clones will achieve a place of dominance either. And individuals, politics, culture, and liberty may all be better off for it.
What people are saying:
"It's not hard to figure out" why people are migrating to Threads, suggests Ben Dreyfuss. "Elon Musk has spent the last 7 months making a huge chunk of Twitter's users hate him. He has wasted the benefit of the doubt another huge chunk extended to him. Meta is a real company! Not a bunch of drunks kicking over trash cans."
"Bluesky and Mastodon have higher chances of developing sustainable models that don't end up in a surveillance advertising hellscape, which is inevitable for Threads because Meta can't do it any other way," writes Colorado Law Professor Blake E. Reid.
"If you're the sort of person who wants a quiet timeline comprised only of posts from carefully curated accounts, Threads is not for you, and probably never will be," writes John Gruber. "But the sort of people who like Twitter's 'For You' feed and trending topics in the sidebar might find Threads more fun."
"On Twitter in one of my threads someone just said 'Threads had 30M signups in one day, Bluesky has lost its chance to become the next Twitter' and he may be right, but what he doesn't know is that people here are like 'cool, dodged THAT bullet,'" John Scalzi posted to BlueSky.
"Had Meta launched [Threads] in 2019, it seems safe to say, everyone would have rolled their eyes. Its big new feature is…logging in with Instagram? Come on," comments Platformer's Casey Newton. "By the standards of Twitter 2.0, though, it can feel like a miracle."
"Of the available sites I would bet that BlueSky winds up being more important for setting media narratives than the available alternatives," writes Dan Drezner on Substack. "But this leads to the most important point: the hard-working staff here at Drezner's World has serious doubts that social media will have any effect on the 2024 outcome."
"I think the age of the centralized newsfeed that gave everyone a general sense of what's going on on the internet is coming to an end," comments Reason's Christian Britschgi.
FREE MINDS
Can government officials block people on social media? People have a First Amendment right to access content posted to social media by elected officials, argue the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), the Knight First Amendment Institute, and the Woodhull Freedom Foundation in a brief filed with the U.S. Supreme Court. The Court is currently reviewing two cases—Lindke v. Freed and O'Connor-Ratcliff v. Garnier—concerning the issue.
It's not enough to consider whether an official's account is delineated as a government account or a personal account, they argue. Instead, courts must look at how the account is actually used. If the "personal" account posts concern government business, the official should not be able to block people from accessing it, they say.
"We are asking the Court to find that the ultimate test is how an account is used," explained EFF attorney Sophia Cope in a statement. "If officials choose to mix government and nongovernment content on their account, they must accept the First Amendment obligations that go with using their account for governmental purposes."
You can find their full amicus brief here.
FREE MARKETS
Latest jobs report shows openings down, quitting up. May saw 9.8 million job openings, down from 10.3 million in April, according to the latest data released by the U.S. Labor Department. Meanwhile, "the quits rate, which is often used to gauge a worker's confidence in the job market, increased in May, particularly in the health care, social assistance and construction industries," reports The New York Times:
A rise in quitting often signals workers' confidence that they will be able to find other work, often better paying. But fewer workers are quitting their jobs than were doing so last year at the height of what was called the "great resignation."
QUICK HITS
6th Cir. holds that a prosecutor pressuring a key witness to destroy potentially exculpatory evidence in violation of a court order came within the traditional role of a prosecutor, so the prosecutor has absolute immunity from a civil suit. https://t.co/ybfOjsLPs3 pic.twitter.com/MOhrlzpBll
— Gabriel Malor (@gabrielmalor) July 5, 2023
• Twitter is threatening Threads in court. Semafor reports that Twitter lawyer Alex Spiro sent a letter to Meta accusing it of hiring former Twitter employees who "had and continue to have access to Twitter's trade secrets and other highly confidential information" in order to create a "copycat" app. But "no one on the Threads engineering team is a former Twitter employee—that's just not a thing," a source inside Meta told Semafor.
• Techdirt's Mike Masnick weighs in on the recent court decision barring the federal government from urging social media companies to suppress or remove content.
• A backdoor route to student loan debt forgiveness? "While everyone's focus has been on the administration's outrageous cancellation stunt, the [Department of Education] has been working tirelessly to accomplish an even more disastrous policy: a new Income-Driven Repayment rule," writes the Pacific Legal Foundation's Caleb Kruckenberg in the New York Post. "While styled as a rule that simply tinkers with the details of existing income-based repayment programs, it effectively does the same work as the cancellation effort: It writes off the debts of millions of college-educated borrowers."
• "Former President Donald Trump posted on his social media platform what he claimed was the home address of former President Barack Obama on the same day that a man with guns in his van was arrested near the property," reports the Associated Press. The June 29 arrest of Taylor Taranto was revealed as part of a federal court filing related to his participation in the January 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol.
• "While Salon Magazine declares that we all live in a 'libertarian dystopia,' and a new brand of big-government conservatives promise to free the Republican party and American government from their libertarian captivity, Barton Swaim declares in the Wall Street Journal that a new book 'works as an obituary' for libertarianism," comments David Boaz at the Cato at Liberty blog. "That's not a characterization that I think the authors—Matt Zwolinski and John Tomasi—would accept of their book, The Individualists: Radicals, Reactionaries, and the Struggle for the Soul of Libertarianism." (Zwolinski offers his own thoughts here.)
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Tens of millions of
peoplebots have now signed up for Threads, the new app meant to compete with Twitter.Threads — for people who thought TikTok did not scoop enough of their personal data up
Here’s the deal with Threads, and why it got so many users so fast. If you have an Instagram account, you automatically get signed up for Threads. Then, the only way to delete Threads (if you don’t want it) is to delete your Instagram account.
Democracy!
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There is no “automatic sign up for Threads”. Instagram users have to download a separate app, for one thing. That’s not “automatic” in any sense of the word.
Threads is currently a part of Instagram, so it is true that you cannot currently “delete” a Threads account and keep your Instagram account (although you can “deactivate” your Threads presence). But…
“Head of Instagram Adam Mosseri has now addressed the issue in a post on his own Threads account. “Threads is powered by Instagram, so right now it’s just one account, but we’re looking into a way to delete your Threads account separately,” wrote Mosseri.”
IOW, it’s early days. None of these SM apps will ever entice me to join them, but they do appear to serve a purpose for many people. Maybe Twitter just needs Trump to re-join (and kill Troof Social in the process) to stave off this latest Zuckerpunch?
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US oil output to rise to record high in July but growth narrowing, EIA says
By Stephanie Kelly
https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/us-oil-output-rise-record-high-july-growth-narrowing-eia-2023-06-12/
Drill, baby Drill.
USA #1
Goodbye 2022 – and good riddance. Markets close out their worst year since 2008
#DefendBidenAtAllCosts
“Nuh uh!” – buttplug
“What about those multiple bear markets that happened under Trump that for some reason no one noticed?!?!” – also buttplug
This guys understanding of the market and economy is on the level of an econ 101 student.
My fellow classic liberal wrote that conservatives were shallow and dim-witted in his essay “Why I Am Not a Conservative”. Read it.
You mean the article printed in 1960 and has virtually no bearing on today yet still manages to call out the illiberalism of the left in the open?
turd lies. turd lies when he knows he’s lying. turd lies when we know he’s lying. turd lies when he knows that we know he’s lying.
turd lies. turd is a lying pile of lefty shit, a TDS-addled asshole and a pederast besides.
“My fellow classic liberal”
Yeah, classical liberals don’t go around proclaiming themselves “classical liberals”.
Especially when they just finished posting cover for a proggy politician.
At one time, turd claimed to have worked in ‘banking’; just guessing his work there had to do with emptying the waste baskets after closing hours.
turd lies; it’s what turd does.
His lies are so blatant as to not even be slightly amusing anymore.
Yeah. He gave up trying. Calling Schiff the one honest politician was the death rattle of his transparent facade.
https://twitter.com/zerohedge/status/1677306320771317761?t=I1h7SKAw_VY6eqo6rdO11Q&s=19
Payrolls for every month in 2023 have been revised lower.
[Graph]
turd, the ass-clown of the commentariat, lies; it’s all he ever does. turd is a kiddie diddler, and a pathological liar, entirely too stupid to remember which lies he posted even minutes ago, and also too stupid to understand we all know he’s a liar.
If anything he posts isn’t a lie, it’s totally accidental.
turd lies; it’s what he does. turd is a lying pile of lefty shit.
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Twitter may never return to its old glory and ignominy.
Just because you’re pissy that Elon allows everyone, not just the left, to have a voice on Twitter does not mean it’s dead. Twitter has never had more users than it has currently, and I feel that its real glory days may be in the future thanks to Elon rooting out the progressive censors. As for the ignominy, hopefully the ignominy of being a leftist echo chamber is long gone.
“Twitter may never return to its old glory”
“being a leftist echo chamber is long gone.”
Ya, that’s the glory she was referring to. The left is butthurt that the gates to their walled garden got opened up and the plebs got in and are making fun of the stupid shit they are wearing/saying
Don’t forget the original version of the coveted blue check elitist signal badge.
Wrong place.
As usual, Laursen. Wrong time, too.
What possible relevant comment could an ankle-biting gray-box gnat make on my accidentally posting a comment in the wrong spot. Rolling my eyes.
Roll ’em, twit.
By calling ITL an “ankle-biting gray-box gnat” and saying “Rolling my eyes”, I bet you’re fantasizing that it was easily refutable gibberish.
The Dee drinking game is take a shot each time Mike posts on an ENB article.
In related Ukrainian news, an ankle biting AntiDonbaskite fired a Stinger at a low-flying red foxbat, but the pilot ejected safely.
Meanwhile, Threads has already blacklisted Trump Jr and several other conservatives — so, yeah, this is an echo chamber in the waiting.
But, hey — you can give them your health information and all, so that’s a bonus.
Threads is nothing more than an extension of Facebook’s data-harvesting pool that it became when the glowies started funding it.
Here’s an interesting theory:
https://twitter.com/WarClandestine/status/1677019105818206216?t=CjTukTjyzqdshkaf1nPjCQ&s=19
June 21-30: Ukraine ramped up rhetoric that Russia had plans to sabotage ZNPP.
July 1-4: Massive external scraping on Twitter causing Elon to limit user views.
July 6: Ukraine claims threat of ZNPP sabotage is no more.
I think Western Intelligence were using AI to scrape social media to gauge public perception of the ZNPP/Ukraine, to see if the public were buying their Russian sabotage psyop.
What they found was that the public logically pieced together that Ukraine/Deep State are the ones who benefit from the potential sabotage, as their goal is to convince NATO to takeover the war and drag the US directly into conflict with Russia, because the counter-offensive was a catastrophe and the Ukrainian military failed.
Nobody was buying Zelensky’s claims. Even the IAEA went out of their way to tell us that these claims of Russian-planted explosives were unverified.
I think Western Intelligence saw that the public were not buying their psyop attempt, and AI judged that they couldn’t successfully pull it off because the data they scraped showed that the public were too keen to their plot. Thus Budanov claiming the threat has magically disappeared.
In other words, I think public awareness might have just prevented Chernobyl 2.0.
Regardless of if this is what actually happened or not, one thing is for certain; citizen journalists are dominating in the Information War right now. We are taking Western propaganda and dismantling it in quick succession. The enemy have lost their stranglehold on the narrative and thus public perception.
We are winning.
“because the counter-offensive was a catastrophe and the Ukrainian military failed.”
Fake news Putin puppet!
That’s always been Facebook’s function once it received angel investment from Thiel and Breyer. Both of those guys are glowie-connected, and it’s hardly a coincidence that Facebook went from being a shitty MySpace clone, topossessing a cutting edge user interface and data-mining capabilty after that happened. As I’ve always pointed out, Facebook became as big as it did by design. Zuck became a made man because the feds saw the potential in his platform to serve them as a massive intel-gathering database.
Makes sense.
I remember when it first came out. It was basically just a college network.
Vince Young accepted my friend request (I had absolutely no connection to him and was several states away) then won the national championship.
We never talked about it (or at all).
“Blacklisted”? Cite please?
I just googled for validation of your claim and all I could find is an article saying some of his posts on Threads have been flagged for misinformation. That’s not “blacklisting”.
It is amazing watching you defend censorship. Can you post examples of his misinformation or does that not interest you? Blind allegiance to narratives?
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Here’s your cite, if you bother to unmute people.
https://www.ibtimes.com/threads-shows-warning-when-following-trump-don-jr-account-has-repeatedly-posted-false-info-3703808
Former presidential son and Donald Trump’s namesake, Don Jr., slammed Meta’s new social media platform Threads Friday for allegedly flagging him as a source of misinformation.
According to the screenshots Don Jr. posted on Twitter, a prompt warning would appear to Threads users trying to follow him on the platform.
“Are you sure you want to follow donaldtrumpjr?” the alleged warning read. “This account has repeatedly posted false information that was reviewed by independent fact-checkers or went against our Community Guidelines.”
He mutes people because he doesn’t want to see those cites.
Do you know just how hard it is on the troll to be always proven wrong?
^why are you such a bootlicker for the regime? Why do you support censorship? it makes no sense unless you are a fed.
His Twitter accounts have pictures documenting the issue.
You can do the tiniest sliver of investigating yourself. Even gave you the name to make it super easy.
And individuals, politics, culture, and liberty may all be better off for it.
You deliberately ignored the last sentence of the same paragraph. That’s what’s called “cherry-picking.” Usually it’s a tactic of the dishonest left when they claim someone means the opposite of what they actually said.
Why are you behaving exactly like the leftists you hate so much?
Poor sarc.
Dude, that is not cherry-picking. It is not even presented out of context.
is a complete thought. ENB clearly meant that Twitter is not what it used to be. The whole article reflects that premise. And if you ignore the rest of the paragraph including
it does not change the meaning of the quoted sentence in the least. It was actually the perfect sentence to choose to summarize ENB’s position on Twitter. Your “gotcha” is a complete self-own.
You put me in mind of a quote from George Orwell in Politics and the English Language:
Sarc and Mike continue to rationalize their pro censorship of the last few years. They continue to parse to try to find a defense of it. To do this they have to gaslight for Reason who also defended it.
The right are justified in taking any action, using any tactic, because the left “started it”.
If that sounds an awful lot like an argument siblings in the backseat of a car make while on summer road trip, well draw your own conclusions.
Who said we are the right, Laursen?
Everyone Mike doesn’t like is the “right” (and Hitler).
The left are justified in any action they take. Any comment about it is what is unjustified. – Mike.
The right are justified
Isn’t that a self-proving statement?
See, that is how you take something out of context, which still isn’t cherry picking.
Twitter is ddddddddddeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaadddddddddddddd!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Are the walls are closing in on Musk? He does own a drilling company.
Yeah, that’s about the most significant thing for them to gripe about. Twitter’s had some hiccups yes, but for the general day-to-day it works just about as it always had.
It’s telling that she’s more worried about censorship of female nipples than political speech.
Cite?
Hey, Laursen, here’s your fucking cite:
They don’t like Meta’s heavy-handed content moderation policies (no female nipples is already a rule).
It’s right in the article, you lazy asshole.
I’m pro female nipple.
It is the treating users like idiots and children that pisses me off.
Female or “female”?
Pathetic.
Does your wife make you sleep on the couch if you don’t defend her in the comment section?
Behold the mighty Sealion!
Good grief, I knew your were a sad pathetic commenter, but I didn’t realize how deep the stupid went. And to admit you don’t read the article…. wowsers!
I read the article. There was no statement about freedom of female nipples being more important than freedom of political speech.
Thus, why I asked for a cite. Since you claim it’s in the article, please quote where such a statement was made.
Dear White Mike,
Can you infer that I think you are a shitposting weasel from the context of this post, or do I need to explicitly state it?
ITL did. He posted the quote in the very first reply to you.
If you weren’t so terrified of having to defend your ideas, you wouldn’t have muted 95% of the commentariat, and so would have seen it and saved yourself embarrassment.
It is funnier to see White Mike do White Mike in a string of stupid replies then have him slither away after one idiotic post.
Why ask for a cite if it is in the article?
That is, at best, exceptionally lazy. And, it might be added, your earned stereotype here.
And here’s the thing–any competitor to Twitter needs to do Twitter better than Twitter does, in order to gain that consumer saturation. What made it the platform of choice for the mass media and celebrities was its ease of use and the format of the platform that allowed for the pithy remarks these people specialize in. Facebook is a different animal that was more geared to a pleb experience. That’s also why Mastadon ultimately crapped out as the Next Thing, because the fediverse is specifically geared towards limiting your audience to strictly like-minded individuals. It was never designed to be a vehicle for manufacturing consensus amongst a larger populace like Twitter became.
Twitter became the public square. A place where you go to be seen and heard. They used to use that idea in their advertising until they realized that the word “public” was too problematic when they got caught excluding viewpoints.
They label Musk a conservative, but he seems more like a 70s era liberal. He is honoring the tradition of the public square. He is making Twitter honest.
I’d say he’s more reflective of “third way” 90s liberalism that celebrated technological advancements, but was skeptical of government deep state use of them, and the latter’s insidious ability to manipulate people with its influence. That’s actually where I think he misses the boat, because he should know as well as anyone that these companies aren’t allowed to get as big as they are without the government’s blessing, and that there’s an expectation that the feds will get something out of that arrangement.
Bill Gates didn’t miss the boat, or should I say, the plane?
I think it was Ken who pointed out that the feds stopped going after Gates when he and Melinda started leaning extremely hard into left-liberal philanthropic activities. That’s also why their main beef with Zuckerberg is that he didn’t make Facebook censor people nearly as aggressively as Twitter did, and put out Frances Haugen as their “whistle-blowing” concern troll to try and get him in line, even the “voter integrity” group he headed arguably was responsible for swinging the election to Biden .
Yes, even in Mexico, telling the truth is a crime.
https://www.spiked-online.com/2023/07/06/mexico-has-made-it-a-crime-to-tell-the-truth/
Rodrigo Iván Cortés is a former Mexican congressman and civil-society leader. Last year, he was convicted of ‘gender-based political violence’, which was made a specific crime in Mexico in 2020, and of ‘digital, symbolic, psychological and sexual violence’.
You might expect these convictions to be the result of some particularly heinous acts against women. You would be wrong. Cortés was actually convicted for ‘misgendering’ a trans politician in his social-media posts.
Cortés is not alone. Gabriel Quadri, a classical-liberal congressman, was also convicted of ‘gender-based political violence’ last year for tweets that were critical of gender ideology.
Essentially, he has been convicted for standing up for women. Mexico’s congress is legally required to have a 50 / 50 representation of both men and women. When two men identifying as women (one of them being Luévano) took seats that were reserved for women in the legislature in 2021, Quadri used Twitter to say what millions of others were undoubtedly thinking – is this fair for women? Asking that question was enough to land him in the dock.
The rise of trans ideology in Mexico ought to be a warning to the world. This crackdown on ‘misgendering’ has made it a crime to tell the truth.
I would not have expected this in Mexico, but the intolerance of the Left does not surprise me in any country.
But what are the cartels doing to promote DEI?
Does killing indiscriminately count?
Their gunfire at all hours makes everyone Woke.
😉
They put young Latin women in various positions.
“Mexicos Congress is legally required to have a 50/50 representation of both men and women.”
Jesus….
Yes, he represents Guanajuato – Senator Jesús Cabrera Muñoz Ledo.
Wow, another Mike Masnick link. That is so unusual. And, wow, not all that against government censorship (sorry, “partnering with social media to deal with ‘misinformation'”).
When, precisely, did Koch decide that libertarianism was a bad idea?
When David Koch became incapacitated and died. Charles Koch is more of authoritarian-lite. Like Bud Light, but without the gender issues.
The remaining Kochs are just globalist half wits. They know nothing. The Dave smith debate showed how little they thought through their ideas. It was rough listening to Koch. He has no firm answers just keeping his arguments. Virtually post modernist arguments. Light libertarian construction over culture views of the elites.
That wasn’t really Charles Koch though.
Thats why I used Kochs plural and didn’t say Charlie.
Uggghhh
When the Democratic Party fully embraced open borders. 😉
#CheapLaborAboveAll
Yeah, how weird. Quoting a tech pundit on a tech topic.
Ah, I forgot. Quoting is endorsing according to the commentariat rule book.
Cite?
Quoting the exact same one with the exact same take on every issue?
As for the second sentence, a citation is desperately needed there.
“Mike Masnick, Lefty Shill, wrote an article which I will link unashamedly…”
Bill Ackman says it’ll be a ‘huge loss’ if JPMorgan boss Jamie Dimon doesn’t run for US president
.
https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/bill-ackman-jpmorgan-jamie-dimon-us-president-warren-buffet-clinton-2023-7
Brilliant guy. But it will never happen. Each party prefers idiots.
What, precisely, has Dimon done to be labeled a “genius”? Examples.
he runs the largest bank in the world and seems to avoid every financial crisis … he did eat a big dick on the whole wework fiasco
Also “Business Insider”! “Daily Worker” must be too right-wing for turd.
turd lies. turd lies when he knows he’s lying. turd lies when we know he’s lying. turd lies when he knows that we know he’s lying.
turd lies. turd is a lying pile of lefty shit and a pederast besides.
ENB in bed with TechDirt again, because Vox is too right wing
Sniffing for answers about White House cocaine.
https://www.thecentersquare.com/national/article_5f845520-1c1d-11ee-93d9-f3bd6d8ea0a6.html
U.S. Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., sent a letter to U.S. Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle requesting that she release information about the cocaine. He also requested Cheatle provide the Secret Service’s procedures for keeping the White House complex secure.
“I urge you to release that information quickly, as the American people deserve to know whether illicit drugs were found in an area where confidential information is exchanged,” Cotton wrote. “If the White House complex is not secure, Congress needs to know the details, as well as your plan to correct any security flaws.”
Cotton also requested a complete list of people who have access to the White House complex without passing through any security screening, a list of people who have access subject to lesser security screening requirements and “a description of the circumstances under which the Secret Service chooses not to use K-9 screening for West Wing visitors,” according to the letter.
Cotton further requested how often the Secret Service has found illegal drugs at the White House in the last five years, how often such drugs were detected during security screenings and how often drugs were found inside secure areas.
This story is too local, but it does include Republicans Pouncing. Once we have a reliably leftist regime-friendly take on it, we’ll get some daily updates of the shifting narrative
Like:
“IRS whistleblower lawyers fire back at Hunter Biden team: ‘Hair’s breadth from defamation suit’”
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/other/irs-whistleblower-lawyers-fire-back-at-hunter-biden-team-hair-s-breadth-from-defamation-suit/ar-AA1dtmst
And nothing else happened.
Here’s my thing though: Hunter Biden doing cocaine is just not that interesting to me. I don’t really give a shit about it. Busting Hunter in the White House with cocaine in his pocket makes Biden look bad, and you can use it politically, but it backfires when you whinge about the presence of a drug constituting some kind of security threat.
The only reason I’m interested in Hunter Biden’s crimes are the extent to which Joe Biden himself is implicated. There’s evidence of Joe being involved in the corruption through Hunter, but that’s the only degree to which I care about Hunter being a scumbag.
I think continual, blatant, two-tiered justice is not good for liberty.
Busting Hunter in the White House with cocaine in his pocket makes Biden look bad, and you can use it politically, but it backfires when you whinge about the presence of a drug constituting some kind of security threat.
That’s a false framing which doesn’t really apply to the situation. Anyone who’s been to the White House knows that it’s one of the most highly secured places in the country. Visitors are nearly subject to full-body cavity searches before they can get in, even the press, and their visitor tags have tracking devices so the Secret Service knows where they are at all times. Someone sneaking a baggie of what turned out to be blow, but could have been anthrax, into the building and then losing it in the hallway simply isn’t supposed to happen. That’s why there was an initial evacuation of the building when the blow was found.
The incident makes Biden look bad specifically because those kinds of substances are supposed to be caught at the front door to begin with, and the fact that Hunter is a full-blown drug addict and living in the White House makes the connection rather obvious that Joe is further enabling his hot mess of a son instead of tard-wrangling him like a competent father is supposed to do.
Hunter isn’t getting his powdered substances from a source vetted by the Secret Service. I guarantee you this is a big fucking deal to them.
Unless, of course, he is getting it from a vetted source like the FBI. They have access to some primo blow.
Hunter pals with celebrities and their financiers, so it really doesn’t matter whether the Secret Service has vetted them or not. Those people are all massive drug addicts and have their own dealer connections. That’s how Demi Lovato almost died from a fentanyl overdose, for example.
The other piece of this is that, if it isn’t Hunter, it’s almost certainly some high-level Biden staffer. DC swamp people are known for being coke fiends, and I wouldn’t be shocked if one of them forgot they had it in their pocket, found it, set it down, and forgot where they put it.
That building is wall-to-wall security cameras, and they could easily find the person who did it in 30 minutes or less. The White House is being obtuse about this for a reason.
The White House is being obtuse about this for a reason.
These people are deceitful to the core. They may already know who dropped it and are just delaying to get a bunch of Rs to step on their dicks accusing the confessed coke-head only to reveal it was someone else so they can whine about how poor Hunter is being persecuted.
Never let a breach of national security go to waste and all that.
The consensus is it was Trump jr’s.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HV5emsm8KgY
The Badyear Blimp wants to violate 2A nationwide.
https://www.thecentersquare.com/illinois/article_40a8774a-1b77-11ee-abc3-2b5f298541d5.html
With Illinois’ gun and magazine ban being challenged in a case expected to go to the U.S. Supreme Court, Gov. J.B. Pritzker says there needs to be a federal ban.
Todd Vandermyde, who’s consulting plaintiffs in the challenge to Illinois’ ban, said more gun control won’t make the streets safer. He said the governor’s other policies are “an abject failure.”
“They don’t go after the criminals. ‘Oh no, we’re going to give them electric home monitoring. Oh no, we’re going to let them go out for 48 hours. Oh no, we’re not going to require cash bail,’” Vandermyde told The Center Square, referring to the state’s latest changes to the criminal justice system.
Blue state governors always pull this shit. The inner-city violence is blamed on the “lax” gun laws in red states.
While never explaining why the murder rates in those evil red states is DWARFED by Chicago.
Hey, an anonymous source in Meta tells Semafor that everything in totes cool, so ElonMan still Bad
When unions control a state…
https://www.illinoispolicy.org/union-control-9-of-10-illinois-lawmakers-have-received-money-from-unions/
Unions have contributed nearly $133 million to current Illinois lawmakers’ political committees, according to records with the Illinois State Board of Elections.
That cash has gone to 161 of the Illinois General Assembly’s 177 members – more than 9 out of 10. Almost all those funds went to Democrats.
Government unions in Illinois have tremendous power, more than in any other state.
The Illinois Constitution, amended in 2022, allows government unions to demand virtually anything in negotiations and provides a permanent right to go on strike to get those demands met. Lawmakers can never restrict the right to strike, what subjects can be negotiated into a contract or which government employees may unionize. Those powers, plus the campaign cash, give government unions a vast advantage when they negotiate their contracts.
Government unions in Illinois also have the power to override state and local laws they don’t like, simply by negotiating contrary provisions in their collective bargaining agreements.
Government unions have the upper hand. They can demand virtually anything and go on strike to get their demands met. Lawmakers are prohibited from diminishing those rights.
Unions, including Illinois’ powerful government unions, then lobby lawmakers on the policies they support or oppose. Often, those policies have nothing to do with a union’s members or the sector of employment it represents. Take the Chicago Teachers Union, which has lobbied against specifically criminalizing the knowing destruction of critical infrastructure facilities, such as nuclear facilities.
Ben & Jerry’s deciding to take a page from the Bud Light marketing handbook.
https://nypost.com/2023/07/06/dont-buy-ben-jerrys-saccharine-take-on-the-native-american-story/
Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream wants the United States to return the Blacks Hills to the Lakota.
Which raises the question: Once this transfer takes place, will the Lakota turn around and give the Black Hills back to the tribes they took them from?
It’s never a good idea to get history lessons from an ice cream maker with a hippy vibe that sold out to a multinational conglomerate long ago, but the Ben & Jerry’s July 4th condemnation of the United States as “founded on stolen Indigenous land” is a common enough hostile interpretation of our past that it’s worth dwelling on.
The Ben & Jerry’s July 4th message refers to the Lakota “fighting to keep colonizers off their land,” without any mention of the fact that just a short time before, they were the colonizers.
The potted version of the nation’s history favored by the likes of Ben & Jerry’s is meant to delegitimize the United States as such.
Not only does it make the country’s expansion a tale of unadulterated malevolence, it can’t accommodate the reality of Native American peoples who practiced self-interested, ever-shifting diplomacy with one another and Europeans, and constantly warred with one another as well as with Europeans — for land and hunting grounds, for honor and vengeance and for captives to add to their numbers.
Somebody here recommended “Commanche Empire” (Pekka Hamalainene). Wonderful read of Amer-indian history and who chased whom off of what land. Whoever it was also mentioned that if it had been written by a US-born author, it would have been ‘canceled’.
Commanche isn’t even the correct name for those people. They self identified as the Nermernuh. Commanche is the name the Pueblo gave them from the Ute language (insert what is a “ute” joke). It means the people who are killing us all the time. The liberal belief the native americans all lived in peace and harmony as one large monolithic group is just as wrong as everything else they believe. For those interested in the topic, I would recommend the book 1491.
One of the more interesting moments from the “Magnificent Seven” remake was when the group encountered the Comanche kid in the canyon, and Denzel’s character actually says “Nermenuh?” when he addresses the kid, even though the subtitle says “Comanche?”
All that skull bashing before 1491 (including skeletal evidence that in some areas and eras a majority of males died from violence, along with many females and children) was still somehow Columbus’ fault.
Soon, it will be found to be Trump’s fault!
Also a good recommendation, along with “1493”.
May have been me. It was a real eye-opener on white-red relations. I don’t remember the comment about canceling though … if not me, I’m glad someone else liked it too.
What I liked most was finally understanding the clash between a culture which had no pack animals, no storage, and thus relied on sharing; any hunter who hoarded a big kill was letting that hoard rot, thus sharing was a duty, and stealing from a hoarder was right and proper. When that culture collided with Europeans who had factories, there was no way for either side to understand the other.
“…When that culture collided with Europeans who had factories, there was no way for either side to understand the other.”
+1
stealing from a hoarder was right and proper
Add to that the fact that the populations were small. Inbreeding was a problem within 1 or 2 generations without access to the women and children of other tribes. Raiding and stealing, including taking prisoners, would not have been a cultural choice; it was a biological imperative. Humans have an innate aversion to fucking close relatives. The science is pretty convincing.
“Humans have an innate aversion to fucking close relatives.”
Someone has never been to Shelbyville, I take it.
Or pornhub.
I don’t know how much excuse they have for still acting that way, though. It’s been 500 years.
They had no pack animals because animals that could have been pack animals (horses, camels, mastodons) were killed and eaten.
B&J has always been a niche product and their founders are champagne communists, so this stance won’t actually affect them at all. You expect commies to say stupid shit like this.
B&J headquarters and factories should be returned to the Abenaki and Mohican people.
Any asshole who suggests that someone must return their land to the indigenous people need to step up and go first.
We should dress like native Americans and dump all their ice cream in the harbor.
Only if they provide it free. I’m not buying that over-priced goo.
In San Fran and LA you can get $999.99 of that stuff for free.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12272915/QAnon-leader-JFK-obsessed-cult-dies-motocross-accident-followers-believe-alive.html
QAnon leader Michael Protzman dies from horror injuries in dirt bike crash aged 60… but followers of his JFK-obsessed conspiracy cult claim he’s still ALIVE
Where did Nardz go?
There he is. Dang.
Did you really just express disappointment that one of your fellow HnR denizens is not dead?
Dude… get some perspective in life.
He’s broken.
It isnt his first time. He does it every couple of months. I can link an example. But he will claim he never does it and is a victim when you point it out.
https://reason.com/2021/07/16/qualified-immunity-senate-compromise-tim-scott-lindsey-graham-police-unions/?comments=true#comment-8998592
I lost money on a bet.
Edit: By the way, why are you so hurt and offended that I might be disappointed that he’s not dead (I could care less if he’s alive or dead, I just wanted the twenty bucks if he didn’t show) yet you never call out him or Sevo when they openly call for the mass murder of their fellow Americans based upon how they vote?
I lost money on a bet.
How much did you imbibe prior to committing to said bet?
Why are you a cherry-picking liar just like the leftists you hate so much?
https://reason.com/2023/07/07/attack-of-the-twitter-clones/?comments=true#comment-10143379
Poor Sarc (or is that, “pour, Sarc”?).
“Because lying impresses JA, ML, RC, Chucky and the rest of the trolls. If I told the truth then they wouldn’t like me. But if I cherry-pick, take things out of context, deliberately misinterpret what people say, and just plain make stuff up, then they’ll think I’m cool like them. That’s why.”
– if ITL was honest
Poor sarc.
It still isn’t cherry picking.
“Because lying impresses JA, ML, RC, Chucky and the rest”
I’m definitely impressed, troll boy.
But this is so typical of you, Sarcasmic. You start this shit by being an asshole and trying to troll Nardz. Someone punches back and then you’re crying that your the victim for the next twenty posts.
Seriously, fuck you.
Pour Sarc.
It still isn’t cherry picking, dipshit.
I thought it was illegal to trade food stamps.
Just because it’s illegal doesn’t mean they don’t do it anyway. Buy a bunch of formula/detergent/other expensive item with the card, then sell it at/below cost for cash.
Tell us more about your holiday.
Pour Sarc.
Nobody believes you bet someone it was Nardz in that article.
Wait. You don’t think sarcs coworkers actually come over to his desk and tell him how amazing all his comments are and how dumb all his enemies are?
but followers of his JFK-obsessed conspiracy cult
How the fuck is this considered journalism?
I mean you can report on QAnon and its member in a negative light, but JFC, this is just sad.
LOL, it’s the Daily Mail doing what the Daily Mail does.
You need to apologize to sarc. Daily mail is his primary news source.
You mean a tabloid sensationalizes stories?
*gasp*
Where’s my fainting couch!
Are you saying QAnon isn’t a bit nutty?
See below where Diane/Paul employs the old, “I don’t know what QAnon is” line.
Just like you say “Antifa is not an organization”
Hypocrite.
I said that? When? Please link to my saying that.
Don’t you ever feel pathetic making assertions that people said things that they never said? That is the only way you can score points in an online debate, by lying? Sad.
Here’s what I have actually said about Antifa:
1. I disdain Antifa, ever since they beat up my friend’s son when he was trying to video one of their protests in Berkeley.
2. Antifa is a decentralized organization. (This point seems to have confused your miniscule brain.)
3. Unlike the January 6th protestors, they are smart enough to wear masks and not post self-incriminating videos on social media.
So your continual prattling about “membership cards” during the riots was not an argument that the riots were not organized by Antifa?
He always thinks that once he’s done using a piece of well worn rhetoric, everyone will just suddenly forget it.
Don’t you ever feel pathetic making assertions that people said things that they never said?
You aren’t a person. You are a character created by a federal agency hired to stir shit on a libertarian comment board.
Most of us call out your hypocrisy, and you respond by gaslighting.
3….they are smart enough to wear masks and not post self-incriminating videos on social media.
Antifa are so smart, they bring skateboards to gun fights.
As I asked the other day, and you ghosted me, please link to any example of my gaslighting about anything.
“Antifa are so smart, they bring skateboards to gun fights.”
With your poor reading comprehension did you not see the part where I said I disdain Antifa?
Lol. A tactic you are well familiar with, laursen.
Zuckerberg does what he does best: clone a successful platform and immediately starts data mining.
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/metas-twitter-clone-reaches-10-million-users-hours-aoc-says-app-bricked-her
Threads is directly linked to Meta-owned Instagram, which has over 2 billion users. The Twitter competitor is being rolled out in over 100 countries for iOS and Android.
Meanwhile, data privacy and censorship concerns have emerged, with former Twitter owner Jack Dorsey highlighting the vast amount of data collected by Threads.
Shellenberger further noted that within hours of launching, Threads was already secretly censoring users and not offering them the right to appeal.
Other Twitter clones who have taken a shot at the king include Donald Trump’s Truth Social, Jack Dorsey’s Bluesky and Mastadon – all of which have failed to gain large enough user bases to cross into the mainstream.
The new leftist echo chamber attracted celebrities such as Kim Kardashian and Jennifer Lopez, as well as Congressional performance artist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who hit a snag after just five minutes.
More importantly, they (now openly, apparently) cooperate with federal agencies to spy on and censor Americans, demonstrably for partisan reasons, among others.
Well, up until a judge issued an injection reminding us that the first amendment is still a thing.
But Threads promises “good” censorship!
Gov’na shrike approves.
They are still going to spy on us by buying our data through third party doctrine.
https://twitter.com/WallStreetSilv/status/1677319240418820096?t=FnbJVh-LAZgEcGvWIhCECw&s=19
“What do we need humans for? At the moment our best solution is to keep them happy with drugs and computer games”
– Yuval Harari, Advisor to Klaus Schwab, World Economic Forum
[Video]
Harai is really nothing more than another gnostic that’s been put on a pedestal by the managerial elite because he validates their own sense of value.
“them”
Once the ultra-elites complete their transfer of consciousness into the cloud, we are done for.
Seems odd to see a German leader with underlings who seem to want to eradicate numerous people.
We can certainly use fewer people named Yuval.
Be a real shame if a catastrophe hit in Davos during one of their meetings. My face would cramp from laughing so hard.
https://twitter.com/CovfefeAnon/status/1677317162627637252?t=HPZgw7F1bFI9TDiWR2dnwA&s=19
When you really internalize this pattern and know it’s the only motivation that consistently predicts the pattern of progressive groups, you’re faced with a decision – which is why this realization is the real taboo
“You can’t question their motives – they mean well” – no
[Link]
Pesticide laser robots is a cool idea.
https://twitter.com/EPoe187/status/1677279539028697090?t=D2LlwAKjquW16C3rwqi8jA&s=19
Progressives:
“At all times and in all places, racism and bigotry have prevailed.”
Also Progressives:
“Racial diversity is a great strength. We should promote more of it.”
I do enjoy the constant whines from progressives about institutional racism, while they hold dominant positions in most institutions such as media, academia, entertainment, pro sports, the arts, NGOs, tech and other corporate entities, and most parts of American government. What’s left for racists? NASCAR and the local gun range?
What’s left for racists? NASCAR and the local gun range?
Cars and guns should be sufficient to maintain freedom. At least nobody is talking about taking those away…
Why the constant cheerleading for replacing Twitter.
This one is unambiguous. Elon taking over Twitter and committing to free speech is an unalloyed good from a libertarian perspective. That we just had an announcement that the feds had to cancel their weekly meeting with Facebook about what topics and people to censor due to a court injection should tell you exactly where you should be on Threads.
If you worry over Twitter becoming freer and desperately hope for a return to government sponsored partisan censorship, you cannot pretend to be a libertarian.
Bonus, we recently learned from an interview with Elon Musk and Tucker Carlson that the feds have been accessing direct messages. Elon says Twitter is moving to encrypt DMs because of this.
Notably, Facebook does not.
They noted that Journalists use Twitter to contact sources. Politicians and government officials use it as well.
But outside of journalists, Facebook DMs are much more prevalent. And they openly cooperate with the feds…. and for partisan political reasons.
Why the constant cheerleading for replacing Twitter.
Um, because the FBI is looking for new digs.
Discussing is cheerleading.
Since when did you discuss other than white knighting the leftists here or being pedantic over some minor quibble you found in a comment?
Perhaps, but (as mentioned above) Meta’s new direction is to de-emphasize news and politics, which would make Threads less interesting to the FBI.
And just how would that make it less interesting to the FBI? You do realize that even the most seemingly mundane items were once tucked in files by the FBI under J. Edgar Hoover to be used later against someone?
Feds are already embedded in most of the mainstream media Mike follows. They don’t need SM to get a foothold there.
Which is why Mikes comment is dumb. They are looking for new victims and “threats”, not news articles.
fed
Because brave leftist women need more feelings of security in their online lives?
“their weekly meeting”
Yea, that’s the part of the story that stood out to me as well
Remember, after a $40 million investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election, prosecutors accused Russia of placing $250k worth of ads on Facebook.
This clearly justifies weekly meetings and an $85 million task force dedicated to monitoring American citizens.
“prosecutors accused Russia of placing $250k worth of ads on Facebook.”
*CIA, Voice of America laughs in Cyrillic*
Unlike those prior attempts, this one will have the support of a large propaganda machine, the DNC, and likely the federal government. Also unlike those others, it will not be attacked at the server hosting level, the ISP level, the app store level and the banking and payment processing levels.
So many conspiracy theories have come true, I literally wouldn’t be surprised that the Department of Homeland Security, the FBI and the NSA haven’t jointly funded this thing. And I’m being serious. Everyone now accepts that Room Room 641A isn’t just a theory, it’s a thing and everyone shrugs about it.
As you pointed out above, and as Michael Shellenberger has been discussing as of late, it’s shocking to not just see FBI interference into the operations of the big social media companies, but just how much and how often that interference takes place.
How much and how often it takes place…
….and how the discussion of it has shifted from “that could never happen” to “that could only happen in specific criminal investigations” to “that could only happen with foreign government interference” to “well of course they are doing that.. it is vital for democracy!”
That last turn – proclaiming that they must censor the speech of their citizens to protect democracy- is the “four legs good, two legs better!” moment.
It is astonishing how many of these warnings from the dystopian novels are actually happening today.
But not the Deep State, right?
Maybe a short-term blip. If you have an Instagram account, you automatically get signed up for Threads. Here’s the caveat, if you don’t want Threads, and want to delete the app, you must also delete your Instagram account. Fuckerberg made them inseparable.
Yes, like them. Is there a point?
More than the one you’re making.
Caw caw!
“Threads is the newest entry here, having just launched on July 5, and it’s the most corporate of the bunch”
But Threads is a “good” corporate product, i.e. from the (D) tribe (at least in public perception). Meanwhile, Twitter becomes more MAGA every day.
“We are asking the Court to find that the ultimate test is how an account is used,” explained EFF attorney Sophia Cope in a statement. “If officials choose to mix government and nongovernment content on their account, they must accept the First Amendment obligations that go with using their account for governmental purposes.”
Come on! Do you want Democracy! or do you want freedom?
Hey, since Reason tells us how gays are being treated in Uganda, and how movies are faring in VietNam, I was wondering if they might spend a few moments to notice how The New York Times is treating the surveillance state, compared to how they saw it in the early 2000s.
An intensive drive by right-wing Republicans in congress to vilify the FBI with charges of political bias has imperiled a program allowing spy agencies to conduct warrantless surveillance on foreign targets, sapping support for a premier intelligence tool and amplifying demands for stricter limits.
I’m about to proudly announce I’m “right wing”. Far right, ALT-right even.
MAGA?
Reason has commented on the New York Times take on the social media injunction two or three times since it was handed down.
Cite?
you guys hate elon so much. It’s just embarrassing to watch
Where is Musk on the Reason Hitler scale?
Probably a few hairs shy of a full paintbrush mustache.
Literally worse than Josh Hawley. So, to review:
Trump: Literally worse than Hitler.
Ron DeSantis: Literally worse than Trump
Josh Hawley: Literally worse than Ron DeSantis
Elon Musk: Literally worse than Josh Hawley
For me Biden Führer is 2 full hitlers.
That sounds about right.
At the height of the 3rd Reich, they might have had 165 million people within their sphere of influence. Xi Pooh is like 9 full Hitlers while The Unbreakable Kimmy Un is a little bitty 0.15 Hitler.
It’s reaching Trumpian proportions.
The guy spent $45 billion specifically in defense of free speech. This pretty much dwarfs everything since 1776 on that front.
https://twitter.com/amuse/status/1677281765545615360?t=iMUIc1q0cOA2dvkmrlkUUg&s=19
Sound of Freedom tells the story of Tim Ballard’s real life efforts to free children from sex trafficking. Democrat response is to discredit the movie as QAnon paranoia in an effort to downplay the global child sex trafficking industry.
FWIW Sound of Freedom is outselling Indiana Jones now…
POWER: Truth becomes a conspiracy theory to protect those in power. The Guardian exposed a massive child sex trafficking operation in Columbia in 2018. But to protect the Biden administration and Democrats it is claiming it’s a QAnon conspiracy theory to watch a movie about child sex trafficking in Columbia.
[Link]
I do not get the hate the MSM has for that movie.
Do they deny trafficking exists? Because it seems very much to do so.
Do they oppose ending it? Seems to be a possibility.
When you will support trafficking to own the cons, you might have a massive problem.
It really is astonishing how quickly the public discussion has turned. In less than a generation we have moved from “I may disagree with what you have to say, but I will die to defend you right to say it” to “we need to guard against foreign interference in elections” and have now arrived at “how dare you allow 3 of the leading 4 presidential candidates speak in public! That is dangerous!!”
The press writ large actually openly supports silencing the top democrat challenger and both of the top republican candidates.
That is truly astonishing.
Even millennials can remember the US government denouncing countries that do things like this.
Even millennials can remember the US government denouncing countries that do things like this
But I suspect they choose not to… or they read it as an instruction manual.
Remember reading 1984 and thinking “doublethink” was an over-the-top rhetorical device that described some impossible phenomenon as a hyperbolic warning?
I had no idea how real and how powerful it could be.
Orwell was well-versed in left wing circles as he had spent a lot of time moving through them. This tactic is nothing new and is kind of a central feature of left-wing thought. Orwell, a socialist, gives some great critiques of the kinds of people that showed up to socialist meetups, that could have come out of a BLM protest today.
I confess that it was not until post-obama that I could see that those novels were not hyperbolic.
Railroad spikes aren’t big enough. Let’s go with a rusty section of switching rail instead.
I’m willing to pay for the spikes.
Speaking of…
In looking for the name of the New York Post reporter who was spied upon by the FBI for her reporting (the results of which were used to support the DNC candidate), I landed on the Wikipedia page.
Almost all of the sources cited on that page are *actual* disinformation articles published by left wing media outlets.
In the Wikipedia universe, there may or may not have ever been a laptop. There is definitely no evidence of wrongdoing on it. Claims that the FBI has or had a copy of the laptop are unfounded conspiracy theories promoted by right wing politicians. Joe Biden never met with any of Hunter Bidens business associates. The Ukrainian prosecutor never investigated Burisma (despite what you heard him say himself, what Burisma said about it and what the follow-on prosecutor said – namely that the investigation wasn’t being properly pursued by his predecessor)
The lies fly fast and thick. It is a masterpiece of accumulated disinformation and gaslighting. I would suspect that it is one of the most closely guarded and heavily contested pages on the site.
I am increasingly not clicking on Wikipedia links except for the occasional celebrity where I may be curious about personal life, or cause of death.
“Hey, I didn’t know that actor ___________ died three years ago… what happened?”
Otherwise, it’s going the way of google. I’m using it less and less every day.
I am stunned at the hard political turn they have taken. They had a strong mantra of sticking to the facts and weeding out bias. And then they got taken over by activists.
I am sad to think that one of the groups I identify with is partly responsible. The skeptic movement organized teams to fight “misinformation” like flat earthers, aliens, bogus medical treatments like homeopathy, moon landing hoax conspiracies…. part of that may have either morphed into partisan teams or inspired them. (There is sadly a rather large overlap in far left politics and skeptic activism)
Great interview by an activist who was in the center of that Wikipedia takeover. She describes how it worked and how pervasive it was. Interview does not focus on that, but it confirms a lot of what the original founder of Wikipedia has claimed.
Also when you take into account the type of people that would spend their time evangelizing their propaganda, it completely makes sense that they would act this way. The same kind of people sign up to be mods on any number of sites and there ends up being a massive left wing slant to said sites. Very consistent behavior; push the message, silence dissent, censor censor censor.
“the type of people that would spend their time evangelizing their propaganda”
The irony.
Speaking for yourself, Laursen?
It appears so.
What propaganda are you inferring Mike? Is it your continued insistence social media was censoring on their own?
^ says the evangelizing fed
Interesting. She answers a question I have asked here many times…. how do they get the talking points of the day?
She says she got messages from a group called “Air Traffic Control” that she used to coach the comedians she managed in what to say.
Interesting that something so pervasive – a set of talking points and instructions sent out to woke celebrities and managers and producers on a regular basis – has not been reported on, even here at Reason, where such a thing should be like red meat to a pack of wolves.
This is a very long conversation with someone you never heard of… but definitely worth the time, if you have it.
She makes a very compelling case for “woke” as a cult, with detailed examples of what happened and how it works. The cultlike features are pretty undeniable. She also makes a sharp distinction between progressivism and wokeism.
I watched this before, and while a lot of it definitely tracks with the behavior that leftists participate in, the way she talks about it makes her seem like a plant.
Many times she talks about how she was “doing woke” or “doing social justice” the same way my ultra conservative, fox-news on non stop parents, refer to SJWs.
I also found it interesting that while she saw the error of her ways as an SJW, she basically did a complete 180 and references every based right leaning content creator as someone she clearly listens to and follows. Jordan Peterson, Bret Weinstein, Crowder, etc. The kind of person that does women’s studies, gender studies, and CRT, even if they eventually would be turned off by the NPC zealot like group think and tactics, would not be likely to dive so hard into content that is absolutely the opposite of everything they ever believed, at least IMO.
Then again, Peterson seemed like he didn’t have much good to say about religions in his younger days, and now he spends a lot of his time referencing the bible and Christianity, so maybe this sort of thing happens more than I realize.
Anyways, I think a lot of what she says is absolutely happening and true, but she really just seems too cute by half with a lot of it.
Confession… I am not halfway through it. She is cute and smart and the topic is interesing…. but not cute and smart and interesting enough to hold me for more than 25-20 minutes at one go.
“Take off that silly-ass hat!”
-Chris Rock
Another confession…. This silly fashion sense was the thing I found most endearing. The 1914 Sunday hat and absurd embroidered denim shirt gave me MTV Kennedy vibes.
Confession about confession…. I did not “get” MTV Kennedy at all. I never understood the people who were into that. Time has spoken, and I stand corrected.
The takeover has been happening for 2 decades at this point if you pay attention to article discussions. Most of the primary “editors” who have power to decide what changes are valid refuse to use non left leaning sources as links. Even if you show them factual evidence, if someone posts a wapo article spitting a lie, they will choose wapo. They choose news articles over primary sources.
Tim Pool once commented that, for some reason, Wikipedia claimed he had a blimp. He said they would not trust him as a reliable source on what he has or does not have.
Hey, creating and synthesizing a new religion and the holy doctrine to spread among the faithful is a messy endeavor.
“Tuesday set an unofficial record for the hottest day on Earth. Wednesday may break it.”
[…]
“The planet’s temperature spiked on Tuesday to its hottest day in at least 44 years and likely much longer,..”
https://www.weirtondailytimes.com/news/local-news/2023/07/tuesday-set-an-unofficial-record-for-the-hottest-day-on-earth-wednesday-may-break-it/#:~:text=The%20planet%E2%80%99s%20temperature%20spiked%20on%20Tuesday%20to%20its,climate-change%20extremes%20that%20alarm%20but%20don%E2%80%99t%20surprise%20scientists.
44 YEARS!!!!!!
Corrected headline:
“Weather can be hot in the summer”
I have a fun time looking at my thermometer at my house. Backyard, following guidelines for official measurement stations, then comparing it to the two “official sites” for temperature measurements in tucson. In tucson the two officials sites are at the airport (greatly expanded since site setup and is now surrounded by runways and jets) and at the University of Arizona (now surrounded by a maintenance vehicle parking lot). Both sites show an average of 3 to 5 degrees higher in the summer despite me being only a few miles away from both.
I did notice the delta drop by about a degree after I installed artificial turf to save water (they retain heat).
https://twitter.com/washingtonpost/status/1677121517505617920?t=iAW3vq2WkmzVptDdgC7TdQ&s=19
President Biden is prepared to waive U.S. law prohibiting the production, use or transfer of cluster munitions with a failure rate of more than 1 percent to send them to Ukraine, amid concerns about Kyiv’s lagging counteroffensive against Russian troops.
[Link]
Oof. I get that desperate times make for desperate measures, but dropping faulty cluster munitions on your own territory is rough. Even if you win, you still gotta live there after it is over.
It’s not their own territory anymore, and they’ve already been using cluster munitions quite a bit. To the extent they’ve exhausted their stockpile of Soviet munitions. The story here is the US supplying them now.
And if Ukraine does somehow manage to mitarily take the Donbas and/or Crimea, you’re going to see ethnic cleansing on a horrific scale.
Down to the last Ukrainian.
At least once they’re gone there’s no reason to keep trying to push the Russians back out, right?
One question that presses forward when reading things like this is “how much of this is self-generated, and how much is being repeated from propagandists.”
Much of this article appears to be cognitive bias at work, the writer using his own imagination and a few tidbits provided by upstream sources to create a narrative in which his previously held beliefs are not challenged.
my team is good, therefore any censorship benefitting my team must have been for a good reason, therefore any attempt to say that censorship is bad must necessarily be a deception
And out of that this entire artifice is constructed of self-contradictory facts, all to protect the accolite from challenging their own beliefs.
One question that presses forward when reading things like this is “how much of this is self-generated, and how much is being repeated from propagandists.”
All of it. Literally all of it. Almost everything in that paragraph I quoted was false information. The FBI coming to the tech giants with a list of ‘russian troll accounts’ was a literal lie and propaganda. The accounts were almost never “russian troll’ accounts, they were at best, randos in flyover country posting memes that were going viral. The ‘just letting everyone know’ was quite literally an FBI/CIA op to manage the public narrative. Even IF one could kind-of sort-of argue that the FBI was just “alerting” the social media companies about “what was going on” the “what was going on” was a lie, made up by the FBI, CIA and groups like Hamilton68, created and operated by FBI and CIA hacks.
FFS, it’s like the Hunter Biden laptop story literally isn’t a thing. The FBI and the CIA literally warned Facebook that the ‘what was going on’ regarding the hunter biden laptop story was a Russian disnfo op, so Zuck et. al censored it.
Jesus H. Christ if Reason posts one more fucking techdirt link.
Narrator: But in the end, Reason continued to post techdirt links.
lol
I still don’t see where the federal government is authorized to spend money on censorship.
You could write a whole book about things the Federal Government is doing that they are not authorized to do. Pretty much start with the federal budget and outside of Defense, most of what you see doesn’t pass the enumerated powers test.
Every time I start to sympathize with the “fuck it, just let it crash and burn” line of thought I realize that the same people who are running things now have a plan for that as well.
It’s tricky.
These meetings were not about censorship, but just making everyone aware of what was going on.
How often did these meetings used to happen with TV and newspaper editors? I think the answer is: never.
Amazing how an $85 million FBI program to monitor and censor US citizens gets poo-pooed away as “maybe this one request by one overzealous guy is a bit much”, and the FBI is only one of many agencies doing this.
when you’re a bolshevik nothing the government can do is wrong. Unless its to protect borders.
Nor does Mastodon—a decentralized “fediverse” of Twitter-esque networks—appear capable of becoming The Next Twitter. It’s a swell platform for fragmented, substantive, ongoing discourse among various niche audiences (much like Reddit) and folks who like the appeal of a non-corporate entity
This is ENB admitting that Vegan Meat Loaf sucked.
Yes. Admitting you were wrong about something. A lot of commentariat members should try it sometime.
You first, twit.
I admit to being wrong about Reason still being a libertarian site.
The fucking irony of this statement.
Especially with his post upthread about irony. It’s getting quite meta with white cite.
Don’t talk about ENB!
/Mike
I was kinda wondering how painful it was for her to have to admit that in public.
>>Threads, the new app meant to compete with Twitter.
palpable hope is a little delicious.
You just quoted a completely dispassionate sentence.
OK, and your point is, Laursen?
I’m sorry you can’t feel the hope, but it is palpable. And delicious.
In Dee’s defense, she’s quite dim.
All the illumination of a vantablack reflector.
Completely in your imagination. “What nitpick about ENB can I come up with today to signal my allegiance to the Mean Girls. Hmm.”
lol mean girls. meant to compete is the hope.
if I took the mound tonite even against the Oakland A’s I would mean to compete, but it likely would be far from competitive
How in the world is that expressing hope on ENB’s part?
She’s describing a bunch of for-profit social media sites; that means they compete with each other. Free Markets/Libertarianism 101.
Every free market entity has weekly meetings with government officials to decide their policy, that’s what free markets are, duh! Then, when they all agree with the government on which narratives are good and which are bad, they all enact policies at the governments request to control the narratives according to the governments wishes. This is libertarianism 101 coming from the great mind that brought us HO2. Mike, America is a fascist economy. “Mixed economy” is a nice euphemism for fascism. Free markets and laissez faire government is not what we have. Please stop posting, there are enough imbeciles in reality that coming here and reading your drivel is unnecessary.
Dillinger had a dispassionate sentence.
I’ll even grant the nitpicking as true but that’s the fun. and it’s in fun.
Sure, it’s fun day after day to badmouth the Reason staff on their website you are freeloading on. Such an incredible lack of class.
Then prove you pay. Show us receipts or shut the fuck up.
Reason is ostensibly libertarian where much of the commentariat calls out staff when they stray from that. You having an unhealthy infatuation with ENB does not alter libertarians calling out those larping as such.
Lol, this website definitely has zero advertisements, so the people giving reason their cognitive attention definitely hurts reason monetarily. You are a real deep thinker, bud.
no it wasnt.
6th Cir. holds that a prosecutor pressuring a key witness to destroy potentially exculpatory evidence in violation of a court order came within the traditional role of a prosecutor, so the prosecutor has absolute immunity from a civil suit
not only should he be held liable, he should be executed as an example to others who might consider engaging in this despicable behavior
seriously what the fucking fuck is in the water @6thC?
HO2.
How is that possible?
He Reason! Deep dive on this please!!
There must be more to the story. Destroying evidence is unequivocally not within the role of a prosecutor… and of outsourcing the destruction of evidence is within that role, this is a revelation of historic proportions.
Yeah, who gives a fuck about his immunity from civil suit? Why isn’t he in an orange jump suit and leg-irons?
Prosecutor, steel thyself?
Agree.
And nothing will happen to the perpetrators.
Ruling by the Canadian Armed Forces Grievance Board found that the Canadian Armed Force’s mandatory Covid-19 vaccination policy violated the Charter rights of a member who was released for refusing to get vaccinated.
“The Committee concluded that the policy infringed on the rights protected under Section 7 of the Charter and that the limitations of these rights were not in accordance with the principles of fundamental justice. The Committee viewed some aspects of the policy as arbitrary and overly broad, and its implementation as disproportionate,”
No one was forced to take the Jab! hurrrdurr
“Nobody was forced at gunpoint to take the jab”
It was just sexual harassment – not actual rape. Duh.
[threads] looks great, has a big team in place to address issues
I’m feeling particularly cynical today, would that “big team” include the FBI, the NSA, the Biden Administration and Jen Psaki?
ya … address issues lol
Elon directly addressed this point in his interview with Carleson. He asked how they could operate with only 20% of their former staff.
“It turns out that if you don’t censor what people are saying, you don’t need all those people. “
Twitter became a “make work” program for the progressive/woke. A place where they could be censors and do nothing else. It reminds me of the ghost payroll schemes you see around here from politicians who want their allies and family on the staff of X company.
We discussed a blog by one engineer who proudly discussed working for maybe 4 hours a week, one or two weeks a month, making about $200k.
He clearly felt this was normal and expected.
until last year I was eating out of garbage cans, now i work 4 hours a week for tons of money. You can too, just click this perfectly safe link…
>>”… they must accept the First Amendment obligations that go with using their account for governmental purposes.”
never reply all … don’t send dick pics to the wife instead of girlfriend …
Many people perceive the company and its platforms as uncool. They worry about its extensive harvesting of user data. They don’t like Meta’s heavy-handed content moderation policies (no female nipples is already a rule).
ENB, you are a gem that I couldn’t make up if I tried. The entire Solar System has been engaged in a bloody, nails-through-baseball-bats cage fight over heavy handed content moderation policies, and you follow it up with “no female nipples is already a rule”.
I’m starting to wonder if you know exactly what you’re doing and you’re trolling us here. If you are, all I can say to this comically so-disconnected-from-reality quip is, well played, well played.
I’m trying to think of a humorous anecdote, joke or analogy for the “no female nipples” reference to illustrate just how one could humourously miss the point so badly. There’s the joke about the man who went to the casino with $2, ended up running it up to like $100,000 and then lost it all at the end, and then told his wife he “lost the $2” when he told her how he did… but that doesn’t quite fit here.
There’s a funny anecdote, tickling the back of my brain about an earth-shattering, explosive set of events that takes place, and someone humourously sums it up by only noting some completely tangential, unimportant detail in the whole shitstorm, but I can’t think of it.
Maybe some helpful commenters can weigh in.
“I mentioned the bisque.”?
In the same blurb she describes how they have already banned republican political figures at launch.
Beautiful.
“I was disappointed that my favorite ramen shop was closed today here in Hiroshima.”
–Dimwitted Commentator, 7 Aug, 1945
“Yeah, I’m drunk at 9 in the fucking morning! I still can’t believe those fuckers at Morgan Stanley fired me. I worked at the fucking World Trade Center for fuck’s sake! Oh, look at the TV! Now those fuckers are on the fucking news…”
– Patron being escorted from Manhattan diner, 9:07 am, 9/11/2001
“No news, or what killed the dog.”
Other than that Mrs. Kennedy, how was your trip to Dallas?
The following open letter was signed by 46
foreign policy expertsNeocons whose names and affiliations are listed below.Ukraine Needs a Roadmap to NATO Membership ASAP
Speaking of warmongering neocons, I didn’t see Buttplug’s name on it.
Fuck. All we need is Ukraine in NATO and then we’ve got WWIII on our hands.
Literally. NATO comes with a mutual defense treaty.
Joining NATO now is clearly not an option. Not even a legitimate point of discussion.
(It would be akin to buying car insurance after the accident)
And how completely unexpected, Gen. Wesley Clark’s one of the signatories. You could knock me over with a feather.
Ukraine would be required to forfeit lands held by the Russians in order to join, as countries with existing land disputes are ineligible for membership. That basically why Russia invaded northern Georgia a while back.
Jeff scowls, Mike says the man doesn’t exist.
I was a confused teenage boy who had transgender surgery to become a woman aged 19, it ‘destroyed’ my life… four years later I’m back being a man
Thank god he waited ’til he was 19.
That’s Weasel Mike’s way out of this.
“But, the transition didn’t start until he was 19…blah, blah, blah, obfuscate, bullshit.”
it’s so unbelievably sad that the adults in his life let this happen to him, probably even encouraged it.
^^^ this. I’m a living spectator and am amazed at the alternate reality surrounding the situation.
Also relieving to know how closely held the Hippocratic oath is by modern medicine.
Pence: US will have to fight Russia if Ukraine defeated
It’s becoming increasingly obvious that Pence is an arch-Neocon and was foisted on Trump by the GOPe Bushies to keep him in line.
Pence was the reverse Kamala Harris… from the establishment’s point of view.
Kamala Harris is the insurance policy, designed to keep Joe Biden in power. Pence was the insurance policy to get Trump out of power. If we can just take out Donald Trump, everything will return to normal.
They tried to Nixon Trump, but I think they were going to JFK him if he’d won another term.
I do not believe they saw Harris as a liability when named. I think they saw her as a loyal mouthpiece who would do exactly as told, wearing the appropriate race and gender for a power dynamic bonus.
I believe they saw her as taking over before 2024 and winning 2 terms as a glass ceiling breaker.
What they could not have known is how terribly she would perform in a job where your only real duties are to cut ribbons and talk to the Kiwanis club.
Confession… I also had no clue. I had great contempt for her over her tenure as AG in California, but my assumption was that she was a whole lot better (and more dangerous) than she actually is.
Yeah, I have to admit, many people portrayed her as “competently evil”. That simply can’t be true. She’s the hot party girl that literally has no idea what’s going on.
My question now is… How did that pass the bar??
Maybe she just sucks in front of groups? Some kind of anxiety disorder that devolves into manic laughter when stressed?
I have known some idiots that are attorneys… But I can’t think of any that strike me as quite that vacuous. In fact, upon reflection I am going to say that the anxiety disorder diagnosis is the most logical interpretation.
It’s purpose is to throw it in our face.
>>Techdirt’s Mike Masnick weighs in …
the clowning began when he didn’t stop @The Good.
Look’s like White Mike has a new home to retreat to after a hard day of trolling Truth Social.
Secret Censorship At Facebook’s Twitter Clone “Threads”
“I think there should be a public conversations app with 1 billion+ people on it,” said Zuckerberg. “Twitter has had the opportunity to do this but hasn’t nailed it. Hopefully we will.”
But within a few hours of launching, Threads was already secretly censoring users and not offering them the right to appeal.
“@Meta/IG just released their new threads platform,” said conservative commentator Derek Utley at Twitter, “and I’ve been informed by multiple users that I’m censored on their new platform. Sheesh, can’t a dude catch a break.”
Another conservative, Rogan O’Hanley, said, “First 5 minutes on Threads and already censored. What a platform.”
Threads flashed a warning after users clicked on Utley and O’Hanley’s profiles. “Are you sure you want to follow…?” asked the Threads warning. “This account has repeatedly posted false information.”
Maybe they showed female nipples.
these bolsheviks who run tech companies are utterly disingenuous when it comes to their concerns about “misinformation”
I can go to youtube right now and find hundreds of videos about bigfoot, ghosts, ancient aliens building the pyramids and other far out kooky bullshit that is clearly “misinformation”. Those are fine.
Say something against the current regime, talk shit about the bidens, or question the war effort in Ukraine and it’s censored immediately for “misinformation”
Lefty source, but they’re not wrong.
Report Shows How Military Industrial Complex Sets Media Narrative on Ukraine
Report Shows How Military Industrial Complex Sets Media Narrative on Ukraine but not on any other topics at all. Nope, totally free and unbiased reporting on all other topics
FTFY
The Rammed Corporation is always busy.
Blast from the past, a 2011 Huffpo article.
Could A Small Nuclear War Reverse Global Warming?
They’re always upfront about what they’re planning to do. It’s our fault for not believing them.
I’ve seen this movie.
i would never use threads any more than i’d use facebook or instagram. all these properties are run my zuckerturd who is demonstrably a tyrannical censor. using his platforms supports his censorship. just don’t do it.
Aside from the spying, the spyware aspects running in the background wreck the battery life on my wife’s phones. Has been this way for many years. I went in and rooted it out on my Samsung phones, and do not suffer that problem.
The Leader of the JFK-QAnon Cult Is Dead. His Followers Think It’s All Part of the Plan.
And what made the JFK-“Cult” leader QAnon?
Numerous self-sourcing links and rabbit holes later and I find that Vice has declared him QAnon because “he held QAnon like ideas”.
I still don’t know what QAnon is, so I wouldn’t even know what a QAnon-like idea is.
Edit: Yes, I know that QAnon is a thing, and I know that the media has been quite obsessed with it, even my local paper printing a big, above-the fold headline about a couple of people that showed up in Dallas standing in a circle with tea lights, waiting for the return of JFK or some such thing. But that’s literally all I know.
QAnon was a 4Chan troll meme that the Washington Post pretended was real in order to frighten wine moms and the overly gullible.
It’s since become the establishment’s favorite boogeyman. “Don’t think those thoughts or QAnon’s going to getcha”.
QAnon isn’t clever enough of a name to be a real thing. Sounds made up, like Todd Gaack
Yeah, the whole thing literally turned into:
It would be funny if we got the media to call frogs racist!
They are convinced that people who like frog memes are racist.
I don’t think it is a real thing.
“It’s not hard to figure out” why people are migrating to Threads, suggests Ben Dreyfuss. “Elon Musk has spent the last 7 months making a huge chunk of Twitter’s users hate him. He has wasted the benefit of the doubt another huge chunk extended to him. Meta is a real company! Not a bunch of drunks kicking over trash cans.”
Good god, the cope and seethe from the bolsheviks is delicious. More tears please, Ben Dreyfuss
Meta is a real company!
A kid runs it.
The existence of so many options could keep any one platform from dominating. And perhaps that’s for the best.
Yes, it is for the best. Imagine being the FBI Social Media Liaison and having to schedule and maintain a permanent presence in the offices of Twitter, Meta, BlueSky, Google, Youtube, Notes, Snapchat, Friendster, MySpace, Mastodon, discord, locals, Pets.com, Substack, Tumblr, Tinder, Grindr…
they already do. Twitter is the ONLY one that kicked these cockroaches out.
Which is why they are so angry.
What weirds me out is how easily the entire woke army was mobilized to be angry about losing censorship on Twitter. (Including the freaking editor of the Libertarian flagship publication, for crying out loud!)
Imagine being the underling who has a file on Diane Reynolds (Paul.) and Cyto. And yes, they undoubtedly have a file on us. Taibbi reported that they issued takedown notices on Twitter accounts with single digit followers. Do you know how hard it is to have single digit followers? I have been on Twitter since a month or so after amusk took over, and dozens of bots follow me, despite the war on bots.
Well, I assume they are bots. They all are promoting something.
I’m very attractive to women in SE Asia.
Instagram figured out a near perfect cross section for me – Korean women golfers.
The exposed nipples on pets.com are the best.
The right solution is to pass a law prohibiting Federal employees and contractors from interfering in social media moderation. Then it would be clearly illegal.
The House Republicans passed HR 140, a bill that does just that — and the Senate hasn’t done a thing with the bill in the past three months. Why?
Because Republicans don’t control the Senate. Am I missing something?
Brandon wouldn’t sign it anyway … assuming he can still use a pen.
His pen is running dry.
For sound economic perspective go to https://honesteconomics.substack.com/
Instead go to http://www.libertrans.blogspot.com
Twitter clones?
Someone is really scared of allowing people to post freely if they might go off-narrative.
That people are creating Twitter competitors is your evidence for this fear?
Cite, Laursen?
HUNTER BIDEN FAKE BRIBERY SCANDAL UPDATE!
James Comer Promises New ‘Disturbing’ Details About Hunter Biden
BY NICK MORDOWANEC ON 7/7/23 AT 11:42 AM EDT
The Kentucky representative and Republican Senator Chuck Grassley have most recently focused on redacted FBI forms citing a “credible” foreign business entity that they believe could link the Bidens to various crimes. The pair both expressed skepticism regarding the evidence being foolproof.
.
Patricia Crouse, a political science practitioner in residence at the University of New Haven, told Newsweek that Comer and other House Republicans continually make statements that implicate Hunter Biden and/or his family in a damning fashion only to lack any major evidence.
https://www.newsweek.com/james-comer-disturbing-details-hunter-biden-1811603
Comer and Grassley “expressed skepticism” about their fake evidence?
WE DON’T NEED NO STINKIN’ EVIDENCE!
You were banned for posting kiddie porn links.
Your source doesn’t say what you’re implying. As usual, you got emailed a talking point and didn’t actually read the source. It actually says the opposite.
“House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer is placing lofty expectations on new evidence further linking Hunter Biden to purported schemes of criminality.
Comer, a Republican, and his party colleagues have focused on Hunter Biden’s affiliation with Ukrainian gas company Burisma in addition to newly revealed WhatsApp communications allegedly sent between the president’s son and Chinese businessmen—including one message in which Hunter says he is “sitting here with my father” and attempting “to understand why the commitment made has not been fulfilled.”
The Kentucky representative and Republican Senator Chuck Grassley have most recently focused on redacted FBI forms citing a “credible” foreign business entity that they believe could link the Bidens to various crimes. The pair both expressed skepticism regarding the evidence being foolproof.
“We’re gonna have an announcement hopefully next week of more findings, more disturbing findings that we found,” Comer said Wednesday on Fox News’s Hannity. “You know, bank records don’t lie. People make a big issue out of taxes. People cheat on their taxes all the time, but it’s hard to cheat on bank records.”
Rep. James Comer speaks to reporters at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., on June 20, 2023. Comer has promised more “disturbing” details that could link Hunter Biden to alleged criminalities.
Comer said the Oversight Committee also plans to reach out again to the U.S. Treasury Department, as it has previously, to request additional bank records that the committee believes could be linked to bribery charges related to the alleged evidence described in the FBI form.
Always read a Buttplug citation folks, because you’ll find he never does.
Huh? Does the article even mention the alleged roach in the Executive Mansion ashtray God’s Own Prohibitionists are foaming, shrieking in tongues and carpetbiting about? Iz all the Grabbers Of Pussy have to offer your base shoot-and-loot prohibitionism plus bullying and enslaving the fair sex? Oh! And replacing Stock Exchange Jewry with The Fed?
Whether this is the start of a new social media trend or a short-term blip is anyone’s guess.
Unlike Meta, it’s got legs.
Nice.
Can government officials block people on social media?
And how!
Latest jobs report shows openings down, quitting up.
Automation FTW.
6th Cir. holds that a prosecutor pressuring a key witness to destroy potentially exculpatory evidence in violation of a court order came within the traditional role of a prosecutor, so the prosecutor has absolute immunity from a civil suit.
I’d like to think that’s a mischaracterization of the ruling, but I know it’s not.
It writes off the debts of millions of college-educated borrowers.
It’s like they’ve lost all faith in ballot harvesting.
Former President Donald Trump posted on his social media platform what he claimed was the home address of former President Barack Obama on the same day that a man with guns in his van was arrested near the property…
HE DOXXED OBAMA!
While Salon Magazine declares that we all live in a ‘libertarian dystopia…’
Wait. Is Salon in print?
I’m making $90 an hour working from home. I never imagined that it was honest to goodness yet my closest companion is earning sixteen thousand US dollars a month by working on the connection, that was truly astounding for me, she prescribed for me to attempt it simply.
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