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Post by bixaorellana on Feb 18, 2021 4:04:53 GMT
I couldn't be online most of today, but saw that news story Huckle posted 21 minutes after it hit the US news outlets. "How do I feel about this?", I said to myself, followed by "How would a good person feel about this?"
The fat shit was only 70 years old, but he sure used his threescore and ten to sow a lot of hatred and discord.
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Post by bixaorellana on Feb 18, 2021 16:24:37 GMT
I believe it was Kimby who alerted me to Heather Cox Richardson, for which I remain most grateful. For those of you who have not yet read her succinct, history-based essays, her latest is an excellent place to start. See how the oil-rich but unregulated state of Texas came to the point where its citizens are in danger of freezing in their homes. See how a creature fat with cynicism and bigotry used the airwaves to manipulate the fears and bigotry of "upstanding" Americans ~ heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/february-17-2021
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Post by kerouac2 on Feb 18, 2021 16:31:13 GMT
Seems to me that this situation both predates and postdates the Trump tragedy. Why does Texas have its own power grid?There are plenty of other presidents on which to dump this shit and it might be unwise to blame Trump for everything.
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Post by casimira on Feb 18, 2021 16:38:50 GMT
That's precisely what I posted in the Covid thread. In the meantime, Senator Ted Cruz is hiding out in Cancun, Mexico. He totally abandoned his constituents in their hour of need. No surprise there...
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Post by htmb on Feb 18, 2021 16:43:52 GMT
Cruz is such an embarrassment. Can we just leave him on the south side of the wall? If he likes Cancun so much, he can just stay there.
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Post by bjd on Feb 18, 2021 16:55:10 GMT
He is getting some hassle for his nasty tweets to California last summer when they had power problems during the fires.
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Post by Kimby on Feb 18, 2021 20:03:08 GMT
I believe it was Kimby who alerted me to Heather Cox Richardson, for which I remain most grateful. For those of you who have not yet read her succinct, history-based essays, her latest is an excellent place to start. See how the oil-rich but unregulated state of Texas came to the point where its citizens are in danger of freezing in their homes. See how a creature fat with cynicism and bigotry used the airwaves to manipulate the fears and bigotry of "upstanding" Americans ~ heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/february-17-2021Here’s a link to how to sign up to receive Professor Richardson’s near-daily historical-political updates by email. Always worth a read. heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/
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Post by bixaorellana on Feb 18, 2021 20:45:04 GMT
Y'all follow that link! It arrives every night and can not only put news in perspective, it can point out important items that can slip past even if you're an avid news follower.
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Post by casimira on Feb 24, 2021 14:53:00 GMT
There seems to be a kerfuffle going on in Florida as Governor DeSantis has ordered flags be lowered at half mast to honor Rush Limbaugh. Naturally much resistance from many state officials and agencies.
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Post by htmb on Feb 24, 2021 15:46:53 GMT
Yes, the Florida Secretary of Agriculture (an elected democrat) has declined lowering flags at all her facilities. The governor’s plan is an insult to many, for sure. He’s just getting ready to bask in the glow of his fearless orange leader when the both speak in Orlando this weekend at CPAC 2021.
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Post by mickthecactus on Feb 28, 2021 22:18:54 GMT
I’m watching Trump live. Breathtaking.
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Post by bixaorellana on Feb 28, 2021 23:11:31 GMT
Oh dear, Mick! Did you eat poison and now you need to vomit?
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Post by htmb on Feb 28, 2021 23:53:02 GMT
I’ve wanted to take a break from talking about him because I know it gets tiresome, but here in the US we are still being bombarded with news of his comings, goings, and that of his freakish followers. And yes, at this moment, he’s speaking just two hours south of me. They even created a golden, larger than life-sized idol of his likeness to display at the event.
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Post by bixaorellana on Mar 1, 2021 3:17:36 GMT
Gad, Htmb -- I saw pictures of the Golden Idol and at first thought it was a joke. But no worship of the Hate-Monster and no vulgarity in worshipping him is too much.
I was just in a conversation with a Florida resident -- one in despair about the lack of covid precautions in your state. I hope it's somewhat better up there where you are.
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Post by htmb on Mar 1, 2021 3:56:15 GMT
The governor of the state of Florida was one of the headliners of CPAC this weekend (VP 2024?) if that gives you any idea of how politics and covid avoidance currently looks in my state. However, despite the many complaints of 50% of the population in my community, our local government leaders have insisted we wear masks inside businesses and offices almost from the beginning. Things aren’t great here, but probably better than many other places with large university populations.
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Post by kerouac2 on Mar 1, 2021 4:22:24 GMT
I saw on the news that Trump's golden statue was made in Mexico.
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Post by kerouac2 on Mar 1, 2021 7:28:16 GMT
I'm glad that I'm not a big believer in conspiracy theories, even though that is an excellent one and hard to believe that it was a complete accident.
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Post by mickthecactus on Mar 1, 2021 7:43:12 GMT
Oh dear, Mick! Did you eat poison and now you need to vomit? I certainly heard poison.
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Post by lugg on Mar 2, 2021 9:22:25 GMT
Ouch
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Post by bixaorellana on Mar 2, 2021 19:07:56 GMT
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Post by lugg on Mar 2, 2021 19:57:09 GMT
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Post by htmb on Mar 2, 2021 20:15:29 GMT
When I read stories like this it feels like half the country has completely lost their minds, especially now that they feel emboldened and have been given permission to let loose with their racist ideas and conspiracy tales. I don’t even this that last sentence is grammatically correct, but it’s because my brain feels like it’s on fire after hearing this kind of craziness.
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Post by bixaorellana on Mar 2, 2021 20:46:45 GMT
my brain feels like it’s on fire after hearing this kind of craziness. I know what you mean. I've spent five years now wondering if foaming at the mouth is going to kill me. Right now I am fighting down an evil impulse. On inauguration day I posted Lady Gaga's rendition of the national anthem on facebook. A cousin with unfortunate conservative tendencies got all huffy about it, saying she didn't like the anthem being "personalized". I politely stated my opinion that all music is open to interpretation and experimentation. A friend agreed. That's when it got interesting. The cousin went on the attack, but not at me -- at the friend who agreed with me. She was seriously angry, obviously about our crazy liberal tendencies. There was quite a bit of back&forth and I am so tempted to reopen the post by sharing little Sailor's version. *cackle*
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Post by Kimby on Mar 2, 2021 20:51:10 GMT
On the other hand, some of us have been sleeping much better since January 20. I even put away the heartburn meds. It seems I may not get an ulcer after all.
But too soon to relax as the conspiracists believe Trump will be inaugurated as America’s 19th president on March 4. (No wonder DC police are leaving the unclimbable fences in place a while longer.)
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Post by htmb on Mar 2, 2021 20:58:51 GMT
Yes, I’ve been sleeping better, too, now that adults with brains and some common sense are in charge. It’s not perfect, but sure is dramatically better than the last clown show.
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Post by Kimby on Mar 2, 2021 22:30:38 GMT
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Post by fumobici on Mar 3, 2021 1:42:41 GMT
Damn, that's the whitest thing I've seen in 2021.
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Post by bixaorellana on May 3, 2021 20:10:35 GMT
Waiting with bated breath until Wednesday: Facebook’s Oversight Board has decided the fate of Trump’s account. Here’s everything you need to know. The board’s decision is expected within days. Trump was indefinitely banned from the social media site in January.{Spoiler}{Full text of WP article}Facebook’s Oversight Board has decided the fate of Trump’s account. Here’s everything you need to know. The board’s decision is expected within days. Trump was indefinitely banned from the social media site in January.
By Rachel Lerman and Heather Kelly May 3, 2021 at 2:55 p.m. CDT
SAN FRANCISCO — It’s been four months since former president Donald Trump was last allowed to post on Facebook, after CEO Mark Zuckerberg said he was banned “indefinitely.”
Now the Facebook Oversight Board, an outside group funded and created by Facebook to review the social media giant’s thorniest policy choices, has made a decision on the case. It is expected to announce on Wednesday whether Facebook can uphold its suspension of Trump or if it has to allow him back on the site.
The board will announce its decision on this case — its most significant by far — at approximately 9 a.m. Wednesday. The ruling is being closely watched by politicians around the world, as well as social media researchers and other tech companies that similarly banned Trump in January.
Facebook was the first major social media platform to suspend Trump indefinitely in the wake of the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, and its controversial decision was met with praise by many critics who believed the company had let him dodge its normal rules and policies. But others decried the decision as “censorship” and said it set a dangerous precedent for how world leaders communicate online.
These are the platforms that have banned Trump and his allies
Facebook, the Oversight Board and Trump have periodically outlined their thinking in blog posts, news releases and on social media. Here’s everything you need to know about the upcoming ruling.
What is the Facebook Oversight Board? The Facebook Oversight Board is a group created by Facebook to which users can appeal important company decisions. Though it is funded by a $130 million trust created by Facebook, the board says it is an independent and neutral third party. Its goal is to review moderation decisions made by the company and decide whether they were “made in accordance with its stated values.”
First proposed in a 2018 blog post by Zuckerberg, the Oversight Board is the company’s attempt to have an outside authority handle difficult decisions. It formally started deliberating in October 2020 and has also been called “Facebook’s Supreme Court,” though it has no government affiliation or legal standing. The board is currently made of 20 people from around the world who are experts in things like journalism, misinformation, freedom of speech and extremism, though only 19 are participating in this case. The original goal was to have 40 members total, and more will continue to be added.
The board was created to appease critics who thought power over the world’s largest social network and its 3.45 billion monthly users (including Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp) was too concentrated in a group of Facebook executives, specifically Zuckerberg. However, critics say it outsources individual decisions without creating meaningful internal change and shields Facebook from responsibility for difficult decisions.
So far the board has ruled on Facebook moderation decisions around blackface, threats of violence and covid-19 misinformation. It has overturned Facebook’s decisions six times, upheld them twice, and was unable to complete a ruling once.
Zuckerberg once wanted to sanction Trump. Then Facebook wrote rules that accommodated him.
When will we know if Trump is allowed back on Facebook? The board’s decision should be announced publicly Wednesday morning. Facebook first referred the decision to the board on Jan. 21, saying Trump’s suspension would remain in place during deliberations. In addition to asking the board to rule on the ban, Facebook asked it for any “observations or recommendations” on how to handle other world leaders on the site.
The board typically has a 90-day window to reach a decision, but it announced April 16 that it was going to need an extension in this case. The decision on Trump’s ban will be its most high-profile to date. If the board overturns Facebook’s ban, the company will have seven days to unlock and give Trump control of the page. However, Facebook can make the change to turn an account back on the same day, and has acted quickly in past decisions. There is no way for it or Trump to appeal the decision.
How does the board’s decision work? First a case has to be referred to the board, either by Facebook itself or through direct submissions from users who disagree with Facebook taking down their content or leaving someone else’s up. The board selects a panel of five of its members, including at least one person from the country where the case is based. They are not named publicly so they cannot be lobbied. Members have all gone through training for the job, which is not full time, and approach the decisions as precedent-setting legal cases, even though the process is not part of any legal system.
The panel meets over Zoom and considers Facebook’s own lengthy Community Standards bylaws and consults with outside experts and organizations. The affected account holder can also submit a statement, and there is a public commenting period for any regular people to weigh in. The Trump case received more than 9,000 public comments, almost as many as all the board’s past cases combined.
The panel tries to reach an unanimous decision, but technically it needs only a simple majority. It then takes its decision and presents it to the full board, which can overrule the finding if a majority of board members disagree with it.
In the Trump ruling, the board’s decision will have two parts. First it will say yes, Facebook can continue to ban Trump, or no, it has to let him back on. Its decision on whether to uphold Facebook’s ban is binding, according to the board’s bylaws. The board also goes further than that simple ruling and makes broader policy suggestions to Facebook. Those suggestions — which can include things like asking the company to add policies around issues like hate speech or bullying, or whether world leaders get different treatment — are not binding, and the company does not have to follow them or take them into consideration. However, Facebook has so far been open to the suggestions. In its first ruling, the Oversight Board made 17 recommendations and Facebook said it was “committed to action” on 11 of them.
The board will post a written version of the decision to its website that will include a detailed explanation of what it considered and how it reached its conclusion, as well as the public comments.
If Trump is allowed back on Facebook, he could still run afoul of its policies and be removed again over future posts, as the decision does not exempt him from Facebook’s rules. If Facebook adopts any guidance from the board on how to handle political figures, that could help guide future decisions about his posts and account.
The former president issued a press release Monday morning repeating his baseless claim that the 2020 presidential election was fraudulent. He referred to the election as “THE BIG LIE!”
How did we get to this point? Tension had been building between Trump and Facebook for nearly six years before the company indefinitely suspended him after the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. In 2015, then-candidate Trump posted a video calling for a ban on Muslims entering the United States. In a controversial decision, Facebook declined to remove it. Instead, that internal decision eventually led to the company’s “newsworthiness” policy, which created an exception for some posts that violated guidelines to nevertheless remain online because they carried public-interest value.
Facebook’s policies were constantly tested throughout 2020, when Trump posted misleading information about the coronavirus and bombastic statements about protests taking place across the country. In a May post, Trump referred to protesters as “THUGS” and wrote, “Any difficulty and we will assume control but, when the looting starts, the shooting starts.”
Though Twitter was Trump’s go-to social media site, the former president also regularly used Facebook to spread messages and often cross-posted on both Twitter and Facebook.
Twitter labeled a similar tweet on its site with a public interest notice, but Facebook left it untouched. Employees and advocates called for Facebook to take harsher action and in June, Zuckerberg announced the company would label posts that violated hate speech and other policies, even from politicians. And it would also remove posts that attempted to incite violence or suppress voting, with no newsworthiness exception.
Facebook employees said they were ‘caught in an abusive relationship’ with Trump as internal debates raged
Facebook did begin labeling some of Trump’s tweets, but it faced mounting pressure from critics saying it wasn’t doing enough, as well as from some conservative politicians and pundits who called its actions “censorship.”
The breaking point came Jan. 6 when Trump posted a video on Facebook and Instagram, and other social media sites, telling rioters to go home. But in the video he also said, “We love you, you’re very special.” Facebook suspended the president for 24 hours. The next day, Zuckerberg announced the suspension would be indefinite, saying, “We believe the risks of allowing the President to continue to use our service during this period are simply too great.”
Later that month, Facebook said it would refer the decision to the Oversight Board to make the final call. “Many argue private companies like Facebook shouldn’t be making these big decisions on their own,” the company wrote at the time. “We agree.”
What does this mean for other tech companies? Twitter and YouTube took similar action on Trump’s account soon after Facebook. Trump’s account remains available on YouTube, but he’s blocked from uploading new videos. YouTube’s suspensions usually last only a week for a “first strike,” but the company will keep Trump’s in place until the “risk of violence has decreased,” CEO Susan Wojcicki said in March. YouTube’s analysts will determine when the risk is low enough by looking at government statements, whether there are police buildups and the level of violent rhetoric elsewhere on YouTube, Wojcicki said.
Trump had millions of views and followers on YouTube, but the platform wasn’t used as directly as Twitter was. Instead his campaign used the site to post official videos that were shared around the Web by supporters. The campaign also bought prime ad space on YouTube’s homepage the week of the election.
Unlike with Twitter, Trump probably did not personally control the YouTube channel.
Trump banned from Facebook indefinitely, CEO Mark Zuckerberg says
Twitter, on the other hand, has made no bones about its plans: Trump is banned permanently, regardless of what other companies decide or whether he runs for office again.
“The way our policies work, when you’re removed from the platform, you’re removed from the platform, whether you’re a commentator, you’re a CFO, or you are a former or current public official,” Twitter CFO Ned Segal said during an interview with CNBC in February.
What does this mean for Trump? Trump has lost much of his direct online communication with supporters since the major social media networks kicked him off in January. He still has been sending out news releases and messages to supporters, however, as well as appearing on television interviews.
In an interview on Fox News Channel last month, Trump praised his press release strategy.
“It’s better than Twitter, much more elegant than Twitter,” he said, according to The Hill. “And Twitter now is very boring.”
But being reinstated on Facebook would be a major win for Trump to reclaim his personal brand of communication — a way to speak directly to supporters in his own, unfiltered words.
Trump senior adviser Jason Miller confirmed to Fox News that the former president is building his own social media network. Creating a social media site with broad appeal is a significant technological, social and financial undertaking. Even if the network successfully launches, Trump will have a tough time building a similar audience from scratch. The former president had more than 88 million followers on Twitter when his account was banned.
The Technology 202: Trump plans to launch his own social network in two to three months
Cat Zakrzewski, Gerrit De Vynck and Elizabeth Dwoskin contributed to this report.
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Post by Kimby on May 3, 2021 20:35:35 GMT
Fingers and toes crossed that FB WON’T let Trump return. Life is so much better since Trump was banned from social media.
And he is simply not capable of living up to “community standards”. So if they do reinstate him, he’ll likely be banned again before long.
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Post by spaceneedle on May 4, 2021 23:12:26 GMT
It will be interesting to see what MZ does on the Trump FB issue.
I have zero respect for MZ so not expecting any miracles.
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