THEY’RE ANGRY IN PART BECAUSE THEY’VE BEEN TOLD TO SHUT UP OR GOTTEN REMOVED FROM THEIR FORMER HOMES: Meet The Billionaires Behind Signal And Telegram, Two New Online Homes For Angry Conservatives.
Author Archive: Stephen Green
January 14, 2021
IT WAS MEANT TO OBSCURE THE REAL PROBLEM: Trump’s Twitter ban obscures the real problem: state-backed manipulation is rampant on social media.
Since 2016, our team at the Oxford Internet Institute has monitored the rapid global proliferation of social media manipulation campaigns, which we define as the use of digital tools to influence online public behaviour. In the past four years, social media manipulation has evolved from a niche concern to a global threat to democracy and human rights.
Our latest report found that organised social media manipulation campaigns are now common across the world — identified in 81 countries in 2020, up from 70 countries in 2019. The map below shows the global distribution of these 81 countries, marked in dark blue.
In our report, we focus on the use of “cyber troops”, which are teams from the government, the military or political parties which are committed to manipulating public opinion on social media. Cyber troops regularly conduct what we call “computational propaganda” campaigns.
Read the whole thing.
SCOTUS: Supreme Court May Finally Reverse Kamala Harris’s Attack on Free Speech. “Back in 2015, Attorney General Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) demanded that two conservative nonprofit organizations, Americans for Prosperity (AFP) and the Thomas More Law Center (TMLC), hand over their donor lists. This demand threatened to reveal the identity of donors, potentially subjecting them to threats and harassment for supporting these groups. It also flew in the face of a 1958 Supreme Court decision upholding Americans’ right to support causes they believe in without government harassment.”
January 13, 2021
BATTLESWARM BLOG: Democrats’ Tower Of Self-Reinforcing Bullshit. “The biggest gap in this country isn’t between enlightened social justice warriors and the backward racist redneck freaks of JesusLand, it’s between those who want to continue sticking their snouts into troughs of taxpayer money, feel their own grifts are sacred birthrights above reproach and have different laws apply to them than the peasants, and those who have been made aware of the scam.”
FOLLOW THE MONEY: Tulsi Gabbard Pulls Back the Curtain on Why Congress Won’t Act Against Big Tech. “Google will have a bit reception and members of congress will go and pick up their checks. Facebook will have a big reception and they’ll go and ‘hey, where’s my check?’”
NEVER LET A CRISIS GO TO WASTE: Democrats Are Using The Recent Capitol Riot To Consolidate Power.
IS THIS THE ACTION OF A PARTY CONFIDENT THAT IT ACTUALLY WON THE LAST ELECTION? House Dems Introduce Bill To ‘Abolish Electoral College.’
NEWS YOU CAN USE: Twitter Is The Worst Company On Planet Earth. Here’s How To Bet Against The Stock— and Deactivate Your Account. “For a social media platform to censor a world leader—while still giving a voice to preachers of hate like Louis Farrakhan Iran’s Ayatollah Khamenei and even O.J. Simpson—isn’t just wrong from a free speech perspective, it’s actually terrible business. So, Twitter has shown little to no sequential growth in its user base of late (details below) but it is still valued like its Big Tech growth-y brethren. Twitter is not growing, it is shrinking, if measured versus the growth rate of the global economy, and that reduction will accelerate dramatically now that Twitter has offended every Conservative in America with its action to ban President Trump.”
The link goes to web.archive.org because Forbes memory-holed the original page.
HOW’S THAT UNITY THING WORKIN’ OUT FOR YA? Pelosi: Capitol Rioters Chose ‘Their Whiteness Over Democracy.’
VODKAPUNDIT PRESENTS YOUR DAILY INSANITY WRAP: Glenn Greenwald Blasts US Liberals for ‘Political Authoritarianism.’
Insanity Wrap needs to know: Why can’t we get more than two lefty journalists with integrity?
Answer: Seriously, are Glenn Greenwald and Matt Taibbi all we’ll ever get?
Before we get to the sordid details, a quick preview of today’s Wrap.
- A sad denouement to an accomplished administration
- Tech sites take the blue pill
- Dunkirk was “just a bunch of white boys waiting for boats”
Bonus Sanity: Chicago tells teachers to show up for work or don’t get paid.
And so much more at the link, you’d have to be crazy to miss it.
KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEF: Squish Republican Turncoats Are More Vile Than Democrats. “They’re pathetic emotional midgets who are desperate for attention. If they became full time Democrats, they’d just be one in a big crowd. If they remain Republican, they’ve got an easy, albeit brief, attention fix. Whenever their fellow Republicans need them, all they have to do is slip a shiv in their backs and they get a pure hit of New York Times love for a few days.”
HIGHER EDUCATION IMPLOSION UPDATE: Pelosi’s gendered language ban is new in Congress…but speech limitations have been on campus for years.
EVERYONE SHOULD BE: NY Times Tech Writer Disturbed By Current Power of Big Tech.