10/2/2021 

 

10/2/2021  

 

10/2/2021

 

9/27/2021   Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella calls Trump-driven Tiktok deal ‘strangest thing’ he’s ever worked on, by Kif Leswing, CNBC

In August 2020, TikTok was in talks to sell its U.S. operations because the Trump administration threatened to ban the app unless parent company ByteDance found a U.S. buyer for it.

TikTok’s U.S. operations never got sold. In June, President Joe Biden signed an executive order revoking the Trump administration order to ban the app.

7/11/2021   YouTube deletes an asshat's video, freezes account of Fascist poseurs (CPAC), by Victor Morton, Washington Times

That loss of access to its video account meant the ACU, which runs the Conservative Political Action Conference, could not upload Mr. Trump’s speech or any other live content from its CPAC 2021 Part 2 in Dallas over the weekend.

 

According to the ACU, YouTube said in a note it had removed the July 9 episode of the conservative group’s “America UnCanceled” program for “medical misinformation,” though it did not specify the statement.

 

Translated from bullshitese: the asshole Donald Trump isn't backing off the lie that chickenshit and snake oil will cure Covid19.

 

5/6/2021   Twitter Suspends Trump’s New Account For Trying To Evade The Ban On His Old Account, by Tommy Beer, Forbes

The new site, “From the Desk of Donald J. Trump,” went live Tuesday, as did its accompanying Twitter handle, @DJTDesk.

By late Wednesday night, the account had been suspended.

5/5/2021   Trump, Republicans Vow Facebook Will Pay A Price For Upholding His Ban, Forbes

5/5/2021   Trump Still Banned From Facebook: Oversight Board Upholds Decision, Forbes

 

4/7/2021   National Archives can’t resurrect Trump’s tweets, Twitter says, by Quint Forgey, Politico

Twitter will not allow the National Archives to make former President Donald Trump’s past tweets from his @realDonaldTrump account available on the social media platform, the company told POLITICO on Wednesday, in the latest display of Silicon Valley’s power over communications channels used by the U.S. government.

 

The statement came as the National Archives and Records Administration has been working to create an official online archive of Trump’s tweets as president, including those that prompted Twitter to permanently suspend him earlier this year as a threat to public safety. NARA already maintains archives for the institutional and personal accounts of many other former Trump administration officials, in which the old tweets live on the Twitter platform and users can retweet, like and otherwise interact with them.

 

Twitter, though, is adamant that no version of @realDonaldTrump’s tweets reappear on its platform. The company permanently suspended Trump’s personal account in January, accusing him of repeatedly glorifying violence after a throng of his supporters staged a deadly rampage through the Capitol. It had previously slapped warning labels on a number of Trump’s tweets, including one last spring in which he warned that “when the looting starts, the shooting starts.”

 

While @realDonaldTrump will remain banned from Twitter even in archival form, at least 45 other personal accounts of Trump administration officials are available on Twitter as archives maintained by NARA, including those of former White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders (@SHSanders45) and former deputy chief of staff Dan Scavino (@Scavino45). Those archived accounts — as well as archived versions of institutional Twitter accounts such as @POTUS45 and @PressSec45 — can also be found linked to Twitter from the Trump Presidential Library website.

 

As it stands, though, no official record exists of the more than 26,000 tweets Trump issued from @realDonaldTrump while in office.

4/5/2021   Supreme Court wipes away ruling that said Trump violated Constitution by blocking Twitter followers, by Ariane de Vogue, CNN

The high court dismissed the case because Trump is not in office so there is no longer a live case or controversy.

 

Trump established his Twitter account in 2009, and in May and June of 2017, while serving as President, he blocked seven individuals who had expressed displeasure with him.

Lawyers from the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University sued on behalf of the individuals, arguing Trump's action violated their First Amendment rights.

3/28/2021   Parler users melt down after finding out the social media platform shared Capitol riot info with the FBI: report, by Tom Boggioni, RawStory

According to a report from Mashable, right-wing extremists who migrated over to Parler from Twitter are furious with their new home after learning the social media platform assisted the FBI in finding pictures and videos of violent acts and threats related to the Jan 6th. assault on the nation's Capitol.

Parler "referred violent content and incitement from Parler's platform over 50 times before January 6th" as well as "specific threats of violence."

3/28/2021   Parler explains 'free speech' to angry users after sharing Capitol riot posts with the FBI, by Matt Binder, Mashable

Parler found itself unironically explaining the First Amendment to its user base filled with members who declare themselves to be "Constitutionalists" and "Free Speech" advocates.

"Some users have raised questions about the practice of referring violent or inciting content to law enforcement," begins Parler's latest statement. "The First Amendment does not protect violence inciting speech, nor the planning of violent acts. Such content violates Parler's TOS. Any violent content shared with law enforcement was posted publicly and brought to our attention primarily via user reporting. And, as it is posted publicly, it can properly be referred to law enforcement by anyone. Parler remains steadfast in protecting your right to free speech."

 3/23/2021

 

3/11/2021   Parler wanted back into the App Store. Apple said no. by Stan Schroeder, Mashable

“There is no place for hateful, racist, discriminatory content on the App Store,” Apple wrote to Parler’s chief policy officer on Feb. 25, according to documents reviewed by Bloomberg.

 

Apple also reportedly provided some screenshots to support the above, including those of user profile pictures with swastikas, as well as posts and user names that are racist, homophobic and misogynistic.

 

The company fired its three remaining iOS developers on Wednesday.

 

2/15/2021   Parler is back after going dark for a month, by Morgan Sung, Mashable

The social media site went down in January when Amazon Web Services, which hosted Parler, suspended it for violating Amazon's terms of service. Parler was also suspended from the Apple and Google Play app stores for its lack of content moderation, which fostered discussions openly encouraging the riot at the Capitol last month.

1/13/2021    Another day, another militia-ized App gives militias the boot, by Lois Beckett, The Guardian US

  Click Above to jump into the Twitter Thread

A WNYC Report

A WNYC Podcast

 

1/13/2021

1/13/2021   Twitter’s Jack Dorsey admits internet companies have too much power and praises bitcoin as a model to change that, by Ari Levy, CNBC

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey said on Wednesday that banning President Donald Trump was the “right decision for Twitter,” but admitted that the internet shouldn’t be controlled by a handful of private companies.

 

In a series of 13 tweets, Dorsey said that online speech resulting in real world harm requires action even if a ban on an account is divisive “and sets a precedent I feel is dangerous.” He wrote that if a company like Twitter makes a decision that people don’t like, they can go elsewhere, creating an inherent check on its power.

 

1/12/2021   YouTube suspends Trump’s account, barring uploads and comments, by Jennifer Elias, CNBC

The company said Tuesday night that Trump uploaded content that violated its policies, giving it an automatic one strike, which leads to a minimum seven-day suspension from uploading new content. It said it is also disabling the comments section.

 

The company did not specify which videos violated its policies but said it was “content” that included comments Trump made Tuesday morning. YouTube said it violated policies that prohibit content for inciting violence.

 

 

An anti-government website that was promoting armed protests in the United States ahead of the presidential inauguration was shut down by the company hosting its cloud servers Wednesday morning after CBC News revealed those servers were located in Montreal.

 

The website, Tree of Liberty, claimed to be the "press platform" for the Boogaloo movement, whose followers are radical pro-gun advocates who embrace the idea of a second American Civil War — which they call the boogaloo. 

1/11/2021   Talk-radio owner orders conservative hosts to temper election fraud rhetoric, by Paul Farhl, The Washington Post

After months of stoking anger about alleged election fraud, one of America’s largest talk-radio companies has decided on an abrupt change of direction.

 

Cumulus Media, which employs some of the most popular right-leaning talk-radio hosts in the United States, has told its on-air personalities to stop suggesting that the election was stolen from President Trump — or else face termination.

 

A Cumulus executive issued the directive on Wednesday, just as Congress met to certify Joe Biden’s election victory and an angry mob of Trump supporters marched on the Capitol, overwhelmed police and briefly occupied the building, terrorizing lawmakers and leading to the deaths of five people.

 

“We need to help induce national calm NOW,” Brian Philips, executive vice president of content for Cumulus, wrote in an internal memo, which was first reported by Inside Music Media. Cumulus and its program syndication arm, Westwood One, “will not tolerate any suggestion that the election has not ended. The election has been resolved and there are no alternate acceptable ‘paths.’ ”

 

The new policy is a stunning corporate clampdown on the kind of provocative and even inflammatory talk that has long driven the business model for Cumulus and other talk show broadcasters.

 

Atlanta-based Cumulus owns 416 radio stations in 84 regions across the country. Many of its stations broadcast a talk format, a medium that has been dominated by a conservative point of view for decades.

 

1/11/2021   Parler Sues Amazon, Seeking To Restore Web Service, by Bill Chappell, NPR

 

1/11/2021   Just in:  Trump has been banned by the payment processor, Stripe.  Over $200 Million flowed through Stripe in Trump's most recent fundraising campaign.  "Stop the Steal" was the promise, unadorned grift the reality.. 3/4 of that cash stream flowed directly into Trump's personal pockets.  Accounting will handle the rest of the wealth transfer.  Gotta love suckers who stay suckered.

 

1/10/2021    WSJ Opinion: Twitter Cancels Trump, The Wall Street Journal

Social media shutdown: Twitter permanently suspends Trump's account, as tech giants Apple and Google crack down on Parler

 

 

 

 

 

1/8/2021   President Trump permanently banned from Twitter over risk he could incite violence, by Jessica Guynn, USA Today

“No private company is obligated to provide a megaphone for a malicious campaign to incite violence. It took blood and glass in the halls of Congress – and a change in the political winds – for the most powerful tech companies in the world to recognize, at the last possible moment, the profound threat of Donald Trump," U.S. Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) said in a statement. "The question isn’t why Facebook and Twitter acted, it’s what took so long and why haven’t others?”

 

U.S. Sen. Mark R. Warner, D-Va., called the suspension "an overdue step."

 

"But it’s important to remember, this is much bigger than one person. It’s about an entire ecosystem that allows misinformation and hate to spread and fester unchecked," he tweeted.

 

1/8/2021   Twitter Permanently Suspends Trump, Citing 'Risk Of Further Incitement Of Violence', by Bobby Allyn and Tamara Keith, NPR

Trump called Twitter his 'rocket ship'

Trump's Twitter account, which had more than 88 million followers, was removed following the company's warning the president it would happen if he did not stop abusing the platform, including his attempts to sabotage the results of the November election by peddling false claims.

 

The move is a stunning fall from grace for Trump, who assembled a massive national following, in large part through the prolific use of his Twitter feed. The platform was his preferred tool for announcing major changes in federal policy — and even changes in personnel. He occasionally fired Cabinet secretaries and aides via tweet.

 

He took pride in his ability to get around the mainstream media and drive cable news with tweets he compared to "a rocket ship."

 

"I call Twitter a typewriter," Trump told a White House summit with right-wing social media provocateurs in 2019.

 

"I go, 'Watch this.' Boom. I press it, and within two seconds, 'We have breaking news,' " he said.

 

But Trump used his Twitter account to do more: routinely disparage, attack and threaten his rivals. Researchers say Trump's tweets supercharged falsehoods about racial justice protesters, the coronavirus and the election, among many other topics.

 

The final tweet from @realDonaldTrump, sent Friday, read, "To all of those who have asked, I will not be going to the Inauguration on January 20th."

 

Some Trump supporters understood that message "as further confirmation that the election was not legitimate," Twitter said in its statement. It could also be interpreted as a disavowal of pledges by Trump's staff to have an orderly transition on Inauguration Day, the company added.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Explainer: Trump Deplatformed, Parler Dehosted 

by Dave Troy  (@davetroy on twitter)

(Source: https://threader.app/thread/1348219824506368000)

(Original Twitter thread:  https://twitter.com/davetroy/status/1348219824506368000?s=20)

• THREAD: Now that @Amazon @awscloud has announced they will no longer host @parler_app, many have speculated that they will just “find another host.”Here is why that’s not so simple and what it will likely mean for the app’s future. First, let’s look at where things are...

• 2/ Google and Apple have removed the app from their app stores, effectively terminating growth on mobile devices. People can still access the (not good) web UI until Amazon terminates them today. CEO Matze has said they may be down “up to a week” while they find new hosting.

• 3/ Translated to English, that’s code for “we have no idea what’s going to happen next.” No US cloud provider (Microsoft, Google, IBM, Digital Ocean) is likely to touch this, as it could be seen as providing material support for sedition. No CEO or counsel wants to get near this.

• 4/ They could potentially “roll their own” data center by buying servers and putting them in a co-location facility. But that’s a single point of failure, and many colo providers would be just as likely to decline their business. It would be hard and risky to pursue this.

• 5/ Imagine, after they sweated like pigs to get this hardware all setup, if they get told their colo provider is booting them. That’s a lot of metal to then move somewhere else. Meanwhile, the user base is deteriorating because chaos and dying apps. They will go to other venues.

• 6/ They also have a nascent, barely existent business model that generates little to no revenue. That means this all is nothing but *expense* for the woman who took credit for this terror network, Rebekah Mercer. There may be other undocumented funders in NDMASCENDANT too.

• 7/ CEO Matze has family connections to Russia. We should assume he is getting offers of hosting there. If he hosts Parler there, it becomes open to NSA surveillance. If he accepts material support from Russia in support of sedition here, it could be seen as treason. Hm.

• 8/ Additionally any material relationship with Russian interests would require registration under FARA § 951. And all this in the context of having dead, banned apps, with only a web UX for distribution. With users leaving in droves, and funds draining rapidly.

• 9/ Other bad actor hosts like the Jim Watkins/VanWaTech group are likely also offering to help. They are enabled by a company called CNSERVERS in Vancouver, WA. Guess what ‘CN’ stands for? You guessed it. China.  Their infrastructure is sometimes backed by assets in Russia/China.

• 10/ Watkins/VanWa hosts a lot of awful stuff including brand-name Nazi sites, a range of MAGA stuff, and borderline child porn. They are able to keep this online because they use a Netherlands based firm to protect against distributed denial of service (DDOS) attacks.

• 11/ It is possible that Matze and Mercer will join the Watkins portfolio of well-known Nazis and White Supremacists. But Bekah doesn’t generally enjoy that kind of limelight. I suspect she will decline to go this route.The sane answer is to GIVE UP. Here is why.

• 12/ Parler can never be a viable business, realistically. Even Twitter has struggled to make money, and it’s faaar bigger and more established. In fact, Parler is so far away from being able to make money, Mercers had to know that it would never do so. So why pursue it at all?

• 13/ They built Parler for multiple reasons.1: the user data; this is part of the same Cambridge Analytica data play they started years ago and which continues with firms like Gloo et al, 2: they wished to challenge § 230 of the Comms. Decency Act, 3: to radicalize people.

• 14/ So they now have a lot of data. Section 230 is likely to be visited for revision at some point soon. And people are now more radicalized than they were. Their app is dead. Their hosting is done. People are onto them, their funding and Russia connections. Time to stop.

• 15/ Rebekah Mercer is not stupid. Her sister is a professional poker player. They saw this “company” as a round of poker designed to provoke certain outcomes, with high upsides and low downsides. That round of poker is at a natural stopping point. https://www.wsop.com/players/profile/?playerID=85013 …

• 16/ Should Matze/Wernick/Bongino/Peikoff decide to soldier on and go full zombie mode, they can try to do that. They probably can’t do so without Mercer support. Or material help from foreign nationals. Any US person risks sedition charges. And indeed, so do they.

• 17/ Given the near zero possibility of survival, I assess that all involved will likely terminate this kamikaze mission, take the data they harvested, use it for future ops, share it with the Russian government in trade for something, and move on to a new venture.

• 18/ If for some reason they decide to do the unwise thing and try to survive this, their upstream ISP and DDOS protection vendor will become targets of derision, public pressure, and investigation by law enforcement.For all these reasons, I think Parler ends today.

• END (Source: https://threader.app/thread/1348219824506368000)

 

 

 

 Kasparov:

• Regulation is a vital element of integrating new technology and corporate power with our free societies, with all the rights and freedoms we have worked so hard for. But it takes time, and is far slower than the impact new tech can have.

• I've been writing on this balance between government & business and rights and the public good for years, mostly on my Avast blog. Coming from a totalitarian state, I obviously have a dim view of govt power, which is often abused and never conceded voluntarily.

• Govt can regulate in a pro-free market, pro-innovation way, the way Teddy Roosevelt and Taft broke Standard Oil and the trusts. Such efforts must have a place when the public good is clearly at risk.

• But today, we mostly see partisan efforts to abuse public power to curtail rights, to threaten and control individuals and companies that have angered one political group or another. If they succeed, it's a vicious cycle.

• There are many legitimate debates about Twitter's ban of Trump, for example, and we are lucky to be free to have them. But none of them should include whether they should have the right to do so.

• Lastly, if you think what Twitter and other companies did is "censorship," or "like the USSR," you don't know anything about censorship or the USSR. I do, and when the state attacks a company for offending an official is when you're getting closer, not the other way around.

 

 

With this, one hate drip has been cut for 12 million potential terrorists

 

What's left?  FOX, OAN, NEWSMAX?  Gab?  Telegram?

 

1/9/2021    Amazon Is Booting Parler Off Of Its Web Hosting Service, by John Paczkowski and Ryan Mac, BuzzFeed News

Parler, which was launched in 2018, has become a safe haven for people banned by popular sites including Facebook and Twitter. The Henderson, Nevada–based company has billed itself as a free speech alternative to mainstream social networks and taken a more relaxed approach to content moderation, attracting conspiracy theorists, hate group members, and right-wing activists who have openly incited violence.

 

People on Parler used the social network to stoke fear, spread hate, and allegedly coordinate the insurrection at the Capitol building on Wednesday. The app has recently been overrun with death threats, celebrations of violence, and posts encouraging “Patriots” to march on Washington, DC, with weapons on Jan. 19, the day before the inauguration of President-elect Joe Biden.

 

In an email obtained by BuzzFeed News, an AWS Trust and Safety team told Parler Chief Policy Officer Amy Peikoff that the calls for violence propagating across the social network violated its terms of service. Amazon said it was unconvinced that the service’s plan to use volunteers to moderate calls for violence and hate speech would be effective.

 

“Recently, we’ve seen a steady increase in this violent content on your website, all of which violates our terms," the email reads. "It’s clear that Parler does not have an effective process to comply with the AWS terms of service.”

 

[ Editors note:  This article includes samples of the Parler-standard hate speech & threatened violence, couched in terms of "Lord Jesus," Hell, Death, "systematic assasination," and "starts on the 6th civil war." These were cited in the Amazon termination notice.  i.e. perfectly normal and standard radical-right wannabe terrorist chat.]

 

 1/9/2021

 

 

1/9/2021  Hugely informative introduction, a Q&A session. Click to read the thread:

 

 

1/9/2021   Apple Has Banned Parler, The Pro-Trump Social Network, From Its App Store, by Adolfo Flores and John Paczkowski, BuzzFeed News

1/8/2021   Apple Has Threatened To Ban Parler From The App Store, by Ryan Mac and John Paczkowski, BuzzFeed News

In an email sent this morning and obtained by BuzzFeed News, Apple wrote to Parler’s executives that there had been complaints that the service had been used to plan and coordinate the storming of the US Capitol by President Donald Trump’s supporters on Wednesday. The insurrection left five people dead, including a police officer. 

Apple's warning referenced the following samples of Parler hosted hate and threats of violence:

• https://twitter.com/slpng_giants/status/1347190280492089344?s=20

• https://twitter.com/EmmanueLoree/status/1347260055410896897/photo/1

• https://twitter.com/Lovedrea/status/1347263797614972928?s=20

• https://twitter.com/Wilmographer/status/1346714000554303489?s=20

• https://twitter.com/pjg0014/status/1347265499210592256?s=20

 

1/8/2021   Twitter Has Banned Michael Flynn, Sidney Powell, And Ron Watkins For Spreading QAnon Delusions, by Caroline Haskins, BuzzFeed News

Banned accounts include former national security adviser Michael Flynn, Trump attorney Sidney Powell, and 8kun co-owner Ron Watkins, who some journalists and researchers have speculated has the log-in information for the account "Q," whose posts fuel the mass delusion, but doesn’t necessarily write Q’s posts.

1/7/2021   On Radical-Right Websites, Plans To Storm Capitol Were Made In Plain Sight, by Laurel Wamsley, NPR

Since November's election, Holt has seen websites like Parler, Gab, TheDonald and MeWe fill with torrents of "conspiracy theories, disinformation and outright lies about the results of the election," he says. "And those lies often came from the top arbiters of power in the Republican Party, notably President Donald Trump himself."

 

The events of Jan. 6 brought unprecedented traffic to some niche sites. The CEO of Gab, Andrew Torba, said that the site's traffic was up 40% on Wednesday.

 

More than 80% of the top posts on TheDonald on Wednesday about the Electoral College certification featured calls for violence in the top five responses, according to research from Advance Democracy, an independent, nonpartisan organization

 

Those who have believed in QAnon or "deep state" theories have had those ideas reinforced for years by the conspiracy-driven media they consume, as well as by elected officials who repeat them.

 

Trump avoided using the term for years even as he promoted its ideas, laying the groundwork for what is happening now, Phillips says — and when he lost the election, he then used that narrative "as a bludgeon against the American people."

 

The result is that now, amid election results contested by Trump, "this is a well-established narrative way of being in the world. It's not even a conspiracy theory — it is an identity."

 

"So what happened in the Capitol is really the culmination of months and in some cases years of belief in the sort of paradigmatic world in which you have a very clear set of bad guys who are out to get Trump, and you have a very clear set of good guys who are fighting that battle."

1/7/2021   Facebook Has Banned Donald Trump For At Least Two Weeks, by Jane Lytvynenko and Ryan Mac, BuzzFeed News

“We are extending the block indefinitely and for at least the next two weeks,” wrote CEO Mark Zuckerberg in the announcement.

1/6/2021   Twitter Threatened To Permanently Suspend Donald Trump, by Scott Lucas and Caroline O'Donovan, BuzzFeed News

In a series of tweets, Twitter Safety justified the temporary ban on the basis of three tweets that supported political violence against the United States Congress as it met to certify his loss in the presidential election. If Trump were to agree to delete those tweets, Twitter would return his access. If not, he would remain locked out permanently.

1/6/2021   The Rioters Who Took Over The Capitol Have Been Planning Online In The Open For Weeks, by Jane Lytvynenko and Molly Hensley-Clancy, BuzzFeed News

The mob that forced Congress to flee organized on both obscure and mainstream sites.

 11/14/2021   Conservatives Flock To Mercer-Funded Parler, Claim Censorship On Facebook And Twitter, by Shannon Bond, NPR

On Saturday, CEO and co-founder John Matze said one of the privately owned company's early investors is Rebekah Mercer, who along with her father, hedge fund billionaire Robert Mercer, has been a backer of President Trump and is also a major donor to conservative causes, including Breitbart News and former White House strategist Steve Bannon.

 

"John and I started Parler to provide a neutral platform for free speech," Rebekah Mercer wrote on Parler on Saturday. She went on to condemn "the ever increasing tyranny and hubris of our tech overlords."

 

"Once you start content curation and you start fact-checking, you're introducing bias," Matze replied.

 

Radio host Mark Levin told listeners he was "fed up" with Facebook, where his page reaches 1.6 million followers, after the company restricted his account for repeatedly sharing false information.