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      YouTube Suspends Trump’s Channel for at Least Seven Days

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }Capitol Riot FalloutliveLatest UpdatesInside the SiegeVisual TimelineNotable ArrestsFar-Right SymbolsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyYouTube Suspends Trump’s Channel for at Least Seven DaysYouTube is the latest tech company to bar the president from posting online, following Twitter, Facebook and others.YouTube headquarters in San Bruno, Calif. Credit…Jim Wilson/The New York TimesPublished More

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      Uganda Blocks Facebook Ahead of Contentious Election

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyUganda Blocks Facebook Ahead of Contentious ElectionPresident Yoweri Museveni accused the company of “arrogance” after it removed fake accounts and pages linked to his re-election campaign.President Yoweri Museveni of Uganda has 10 rivals in the election scheduled for Thursday, including the rapper-turned-lawmaker Bobi Wine, whose real name is Robert Kyagulanyi.Credit…Baz Ratner/ReutersJan. 13, 2021Updated 5:33 a.m. ETNAIROBI, Kenya — President Yoweri Museveni of Uganda president has blocked Facebook from operating in his country, just days after the social media company removed fake accounts linked to his government ahead of a hotly contested general election set to take place on Thursday.In a televised address late on Tuesday night, Mr. Museveni accused Facebook of “arrogance” and said he had instructed his government to close the platform, along with other social media outlets, although Facebook was the only one he named.“That social channel you are talking about, if it is going to operate in Uganda, it should be used equitably by everybody who has to use it,” Mr. Museveni said. “We cannot tolerate this arrogance of anybody coming to decide for us who is good and who is bad,” he added.The ban on Facebook comes at the end of an election period that has been dogged by a crackdown on the political opposition, harassment of journalists and nationwide protests that have led to at least 54 deaths and hundreds of arrests, according to officials.Mr. Museveni, 76, who is running for a sixth term in office, is facing 10 rivals, including the rapper-turned-lawmaker Bobi Wine, 38. Mr. Wine, whose real name is Robert Kyagulanyi, has been beaten, sprayed with tear gas and charged in court with allegedly flouting coronavirus rules while on the campaign trail. Last week, Mr. Wine filed a complaint with the International Criminal Court accusing Mr. Museveni and other top current and former security officials of sanctioning a wave of violence and human rights violations against citizens, political figures and human rights lawyers.Facebook announced this week that it had taken down a network of accounts and pages in the East African nation that engaged in what it called “coordinated inauthentic behavior” aimed at manipulating public debate around the election. The company said the network was linked to the Government Citizens Interaction Center, an initiative that is part of Uganda’s Ministry of Information and Communications Technology and National Guidance.In a statement, a Facebook representative said the network “used fake and duplicate accounts to manage pages, comment on other people’s content, impersonate users, re-share posts in groups to make them appear more popular than they were.”Facebook’s investigation into the network began after research from the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab showcased a network of social media accounts that had engaged in a campaign to criticize the opposition and promote Mr. Museveni and the governing party, the National Resistance Movement. After the research was published, Twitter also said it had shut down accounts linked to the election.Hours before Mr. Museveni’s speech, social media users across Uganda confirmed restrictions on their online communications, with the digital rights group NetBlocks reporting that platforms including Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram and Twitter had been affected. On Wednesday, MTN Uganda, the country’s largest telecommunication company, confirmed it had received a directive from the Uganda Communications Commission to “suspend access and use, direct or otherwise of all social media platforms and online messaging applications over the network until further notice.”Felicia Anthonio, a campaigner with the digital rights nonprofit Access Now, said the authorities had blocked more than 100 virtual private networks, or VPNs, which could help users circumvent the censorship and safely browse the internet.Uganda blocked the internet during the 2016 elections, and in 2018, it introduced a social media tax aimed at raising revenue and curbing what the government called online “gossip.” The move, which was criticized as a threat to freedom of expression, had a negative effect on internet use over all, with millions of Ugandans giving up internet services altogether.In anticipation of another shutdown this week, a group of organizations that work to end internet cutoffs worldwide sent a letter to Mr. Museveni and the leaders of telecom companies in Uganda pleading with them to keep the internet and social media platforms accessible during the election.Mr. Museveni did not heed their call. On Tuesday night, he said the decision to block Facebook was “unfortunate” but “unavoidable.”“I am very sorry about the inconvenience,” he said, adding that he himself had been using the platform to interact with young voters. He has almost a million followers on Facebook and two million on Twitter.Striking a defiant note, Mr. Museveni said that if Facebook was going to “take sides,” then it would not be allowed to operate in the country.“Uganda is ours,” he said.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      I've been on Parler. It's a cesspit of thinly veiled racism and hate | Malaika Jabali

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      “Civil war is coming.”I saw this message on the social media platform Parler in November, about two weeks after the election was called for Joe Biden. The ominous post followed an even more harrowing message from a different user. “[O]ur people have guns too … it’s time for us to use it!!! Just like in old days.” The poster embedded a photograph of a noose.Parler, which has since been banned by Apple’s app store and from Amazon, has billed itself as a “free speech” platform for the “world’s town square”. Last fall, without much digging, I learned that this town square is one where an increasingly violent far right digitally dances with mainstream, influential conservatives.The fact that Parler has a vague air of legitimacy – unlike other platforms known for their explicitly far-right user bases – normalizes racist violence against Black people and anyone associated with them. Like the white police officers and “respectable” public servants who joined the Ku Klux Klan after the US civil war, or the white families who partied under the lynched bodies of Black men, white America has continued its intergenerational love affair with public anti-blackness. The methods have simply mutated. Memes calling for our deaths are the lynching postcards of the 21st century. Shared among the masses, they make casual affairs of Black terror. It’s not enough for the sharers of these memes to simply believe in white violence on a personal level; the collective experience is the point.I joined Parler in November, before various tech companies announced plans to take it offline. It didn’t take long to find a bevy of hashtags and posts romanticizing civil war. By late November, there were over 10,000 posts that included the hashtag #civilwar and its variants. The person who posted “Civil war is coming” was replying to a post by Wayne Root, a conservative media personality with more than 100,000 followers on Twitter. Root leveled the same unproven accusations of voter fraud as Donald Trump, using the same calls for battle that white power groups heeded in their storming of the US Capitol the first week of 2021.While some on the far right will probably retreat into the shadows cast by polling booths and hidden by exit polling data that obscures Trump’s popularity, many have not. Any perception of progress for Black people, even if this progress does not substantively exist, perpetuates violence against us and our perceived allies like leftists, Marxists and Democrats – all named by Parler posters as opposing parties in this hypothetical civil war).To say that Parler’s users, or any Americans who revel in white power tropes and violent memes, are “extremist” is a bit of a misnomer. What we call extremism is, if anything, a common American tradition. Millions of Americans, if they don’t proactively endorse the violence, silently concede to it. They vote for it. They dress it in words like “tradition” and “free speech”.I was raised witnessing it. There is a monument honoring Confederate soldiers in my home town of Stone Mountain, Georgia. The monument isn’t an ordinary statue erected in some mundane public square. It’s a nearly half-acre relief carved into the massive quartz and granite stone for which our town is named. It would take a runner five miles to circle around the rock formation’s base. We took field trips to Stone Mountain in high school, as if it were an amusement park and not the largest Confederate memorial in the world.Stone Mountain has now become a flashpoint for conflict. I hiked the mountain on a recent holiday trip with my mom, days before white men wielding guns protested against the widespread movement to remove Confederate statues. We tried to hike another day, but were blocked from entering. It was closed for the day after Black counter-protesters came back with guns of their own.When you talk to white southerners about honoring the Confederacy, you’ll hear a lot about heritage. I’ve heard it all my life. I heard it when our state flag featured the Confederate symbol throughout my childhood and in the debates to remove it. I read about it when I decided to make it one of my debate topics for a summer college class in my last year of high school. But what you’ll seldom hear is when this heritage has been selectively commemorated. Stone Mountain’s Confederate monument opened on the 100th anniversary of Lincoln’s assassination.This is an American tradition of terror – a culture of dehumanizing Blackness that bleeds out into the worldThis, too, is the culture of Parler.“Time to get rid of the yoke calling itself democrats,” someone wrote in response to Wayne Root’s revolution post.“Every town needs to decide on a gather place where an armed citizenry takes over everything … every traitor must be executed,” wrote another.It’s not enough to dismiss the radical right as merely having a difference of opinion, or explain it away as a population of marginalized, working-class white men who can be brought back from the brink by reason and calls for a universal basic income.Universal prescriptions are necessary, but insufficient. This is an American tradition of terror – a culture of dehumanizing Blackness that bleeds out into the world. It is the shots I heard while reporting in Kenosha, blocks from where Kyle Rittenhouse killed two white Black Lives Matter protesters, as it happened. It was the ease of white vigilantes carrying weapons in another public square, Civic Center Park in downtown Kenosha, hours earlier. It is the audacity of those white vigilantes shouting down Philando Castile’s girlfriend, from whom I was mere feet away in the park, as they argued for their right to kill to protect property. Of course, Philando was killed while exercising their revered second amendment right to bear arms, but that right is clearly reserved for some Americans more than others.Parler may be homeless now, but there is an entire world that welcomes the hatred and violence it cultivates. As threatening as it may be, the platform will probably be replaced with something else. It’s the public terror that’s the point. More

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      La historia de un radical: trabajé con uno de los asaltantes del Capitolio

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }Capitol Riot FalloutLatest UpdatesInside the SiegeVisual TimelineNotable ArrestsIncitement to Riot?AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyThe Media EquationLa historia de un radical: trabajé con uno de los asaltantes del CapitolioEn BuzzFeed, nos enfocábamos en realizar contenidos virales para las redes sociales. Un joven empleado aprendió esa noción y la aplicó a la extrema derecha.Simpatizantes del presidente Trump en el Capitolio, en Washington, D. C., el miércoles 6 de enero.Credit…Jim Lo Scalzo/EPA vía Shutterstock12 de enero de 2021 a las 05:00 ETRead in EnglishEncajaba tan bien como cualquier otro empleado en nuestro estudio de Los Ángeles, un lugar lleno de inadaptados ambiciosos con dones inusuales. Sabían cómo crear los videos que la gente quería ver en internet.Su verdadero nombre era Anthime Joseph Gionet, aunque prefería otros. Su valor para BuzzFeed era claro: hacía cualquier cosa por Vine, la plataforma de videos cortos que tuvo un breve auge cultural antes de ser aplastada por Instagram y Snapchat en 2017.Una vez se echó un galón de leche en la cara y el video atrajo millones de visitas, cuando la mayoría de las acrobacias inofensivas divertían a millones de espectadores estadounidenses en esa plataforma.En ese sentido, era natural que estuviera en BuzzFeed cuando llegó en la primavera de 2015, donde yo era el editor en jefe y me encargaba de supervisar el sitio web. Gionet fue contratado para manejar la cuenta de Vine de nuestra sección de videos, y su trabajo consistía principalmente en editar videos tontos y divertidos de hasta seis segundos que producían sus colegas. Al cabo de unos meses, también se hizo cargo de una cuenta de Twitter de BuzzFeed, en la que aprovechó su intuición sobre qué tipo de video compartiría la gente.En esos días, éramos mejores que nadie en la creación de contenido para las redes sociales, sobre todo listas, concursos y videos cortos, pero ocasionalmente también hacíamos espectaculares transmisiones en vivo, la más famosa fue una en la que dos de mis colegas hicieron estallar una sandía llenándola de ligas una por una.Así que el lenguaje que escuché de Gionet, ahora de 33 años, en su “transmisión en vivo” el miércoles pasado me resultó familiar. “Tenemos más de 10.000 personas en vivo que nos observan. ¡Vamos!”, dijo con entusiasmo. “Presionen el botón de seguir. Les agradezco, chicos”.Gionet se encontraba dentro de la oficina del senador por Oregón Jeff Merkley, que estaba en ruinas, transmitiendo desde una de las pocas plataformas que aún no lo habían suspendido, junto con otros simpatizantes de Trump que jugaban con el auricular del teléfono y se subían a los muebles. Parecía una conclusión apropiada para su reciente carrera que algunos podrían considerar como troleo o bromas por internet, pero que probablemente se describe mejor como violencia performativa.Anthime Joseph Gionet en una escena de su transmisión en vivo, el miércoles pasado.Credit…LiveLeakDespués de ver a Gionet, llamé a algunos de mis antiguos colegas, que lo recordaron con una mezcla de perplejidad y repulsión. Era sensible y casi se mostraba desesperado por ser aceptado, dijeron. Una vez se molestó mucho cuando alguien se burló de su bigote grueso rubio y su corte de cabello en mullet. En ese entonces, dos de sus amigos más cercanos de la oficina tenían orígenes étnicos e identidades de género diferentes a la suya, y a veces se unían por un sentimiento de ser marginados. Uno de esos amigos lo recordaba como un personaje triste que no expresaba realmente sus opiniones políticas más allá de la cultura ampliamente adolescente e insensible de Vine, y me dijo que estaba obsesionado con su infancia solitaria en Alaska. Según tres de ellos, parecía que le faltaba algo, que estaba vacío por dentro.A medida que avanzaban las elecciones de 2016, empezó a coquetear con una personalidad política. Primero puso un retrato de Bernie Sanders en su escritorio, dijeron dos excolegas. Luego comenzó a usar gorras de MAGA en la oficina, lo que sorprendió a sus compañeros de trabajo más progresistas, aunque eran bastante apolíticos. En ese entonces algunas personas todavía pensaban que la extrema derecha podría ser “irónica”.Cuando, meses después, dejó BuzzFeed para trabajar como el “coordinador de las giras políticas” de Milo Yiannopoulos, un favorito de la “extrema derecha” racista y antisemita, sus colegas se impresionaron momentáneamente. Luego, revisaron la cuenta de Twitter de Gionet, donde sus declaraciones cada vez más viles le estaban consiguiendo retuits de figuras de la extrema derecha, y se dieron cuenta de que no deberían haberse sorprendido.Sin embargo, no está claro en qué es lo que cree Gionet, si es que cree algo. Y realmente, no estoy seguro de que me importe.Este no es un perfil compasivo de un joven que se ha equivocado. No puedo tener mucha compasión por un tipo que, antes de atacar su Capitolio, pasaba el rato disparando algún tipo de sustancia irritante embotellada (lo llamaba “espray de contenido”) a los ojos de gente inocente para obtener vistas en YouTube y gritándoles a los dependientes de las tiendas que le pedían que usara cubrebocas.Para mí, esta historia es sobre algo diferente, una especie de poder de las redes sociales que ayudamos a afinar en BuzzFeed y que puede ejercer una atracción gravitacional casi irresistible.Si no has tenido la experiencia de publicar algo en las redes sociales que se vuelve verdaderamente viral, es posible que no entiendas su profunda atracción emocional. De repente eres el centro de un universo digital y recibes más atención de más gente que nunca. A veces, el impulso de afirmación es vertiginoso y adictivo. Y, si tienes poco a lo que aferrarte, puedes perderte en todo eso.Incluso cuando buscábamos hacer que nuestro trabajo se difundiera en BuzzFeed, nos enfrentábamos a limitaciones; debíamos decir la verdad en nuestra división de noticias y apegarnos a un conjunto de valores claramente positivos en nuestra rama de entretenimiento. Sin embargo, Gionet finalmente rompió esos límites, pues parecía seguir las señales que encontraba en las redes sociales sin ningún escrúpulo. La única línea que atravesaba era su deseo de construir una audiencia. Apoyaba a Sanders antes de lanzar consignas antisemitas en Charlottesville, Virginia; luego se retractó de manera temporal de esas opiniones extremas y más tarde cometió delitos violentos para obtener vistas en YouTube. Consiguió una audiencia entre los negacionistas del coronavirus y más tarde, cuando aparentemente contrajo la enfermedad, publicó la captura de pantalla de su propia prueba positiva en Instagram con un emoticono de llanto. Semanas después, se unió al levantamiento a favor de Trump en el Capitolio.“Su política se ha guiado por las métricas de la plataforma”, reflexionó Andrew Gauthier, quien fue uno de los principales productores de video de BuzzFeed y quien más tarde trabajó para la campaña presidencial de Joe Biden. “Siempre piensas que el mal vendrá de la maldad del villano de las películas, y entonces piensas: ‘Ay, no, el mal puede empezar con chistes malos y un comportamiento nihilista que es alimentado por el refuerzo positivo en varias plataformas’”.Así que la historia de Gionet no es tan familiar como la de un joven solitario en su dormitorio que empieza a ver videos que envenenan su visión del mundo. Es la historia de un hombre que es recompensado por ser nacionalista blanco violento y que recibe la atención y la afirmación que aparentemente está desesperado por obtener.Pasamos mucho tiempo en BuzzFeed pensando en cómo optimizar nuestro contenido para una audiencia en línea; él se optimizó a sí mismo.Según un informe policial, cuando fue arrestado en Scottsdale, Arizona, el mes pasado por rociar una solución de gas lacrimógeno a un guardia, un oficial informó que Gionet le dijo que era una personalidad influyente y tenía muchos seguidores en las redes sociales. Fue puesto en libertad bajo palabra, dijo un portavoz de la policía de Scottsdale, y está a la espera de ser juzgado. Sin embargo, en el Capitolio, gritó “ACAF”, All Cops Are Friends (“Todos los policías son amigos”, aunque el significado original del acrónimo es menos amistoso).Su historia deja preguntándome qué responsabilidad tenemos quienes fuimos pioneros en el uso de las redes sociales para ofrecer información. ¿Nosotros, junto con los creadores de esas plataformas, ayudamos a abrir la caja de Pandora?No trabajé directamente con Gionet. Pero, en 2012, contraté a un escritor llamado Benny Johnson que estaba cultivando una voz que mezclaba el conocimiento de las redes sociales y la política de derecha. En ese momento pensé, erróneamente, que su visión política era simplemente conservadora. Y lo imaginé prosperando, como lo han hecho los escritores conservadores durante generaciones en las principales salas de redacción, donde cultivaban el mismo interés de sus colegas en encontrar hechos compartidos.Tardé en darme cuenta de que sus intereses no eran periodísticos, ni siquiera ideológicos, sino estéticos, emocionados por las imágenes del poder puro. En la tradición de los propagandistas autoritarios, le asombraban los edificios neoclásicos, las armas y, más tarde, las multitudes de Donald Trump. Y, después de que lo despedimos por plagio en 2014, pasó a liderar la sección de contenido del ala juvenil de Trump, Turning Point USA, y presenta un programa en Newsmax. La semana pasada, animó los intentos de revocar las elecciones (aunque se retractó cuando comenzó la violencia y luego culpó a los izquierdistas por eso). También está vendiendo sus habilidades en la “narración política viral” en la que trabajamos juntos en BuzzFeed a una generación de nuevas figuras de derecha, como la representante Lauren Boebert, quien ha llamado la atención por jurar que lleva su pistola al Congreso. (Ni Gionet ni Johnson respondieron a las consultas por correo electrónico).Mientras refinábamos la nueva práctica de las redes sociales en BuzzFeed, tardamos en darnos cuenta de que la extrema derecha nos observaba de cerca y finalmente nos imitaba. Jonah Peretti, quien fundó The Huffington Post y BuzzFeed, se sorprendió cuando Steve Bannon, quien dirigía Breitbart, le recordó a un escritor que había tomado prestadas tácticas de Peretti para su estrategia en el periodo previo a las elecciones de 2016. Bannon me dijo antes de esas elecciones, en una entrevista en la Trump Tower, que estaba sorprendido de que no hubiéramos convertido a BuzzFeed en un bastión de apoyo para Bernie Sanders, como Breitbart lo hizo con Trump. Notó, quizá de manera correcta, que el tráfico de un medio de propaganda a favor de Sanders habría excedido enormemente lo que obtuvimos por nuestra cobertura justa de las primarias demócratas.“Algunas de las cosas innovadoras que hicimos desde el principio, en la comprensión de las redes sociales y los medios digitales, han sido tomadas por los grupos de extrema derecha, los grupos racistas, los grupos MAGA”, me dijo mi exjefe, Peretti, durante una entrevista la semana pasada. No obstante, Peretti, un eterno optimista, señaló que algunos de los mismos mecanismos sociales que Gionet aprovechó también fueron cruciales para los movimientos sociales progresistas de los últimos años, desde Black Lives Matter hasta #MeToo. “La historia no ha terminado y hay una oportunidad de luchar por un buen internet”, comentó. (Nota: no doy cobertura a BuzzFeed extensamente en esta columna, más allá de apoyarme en lo que aprendí durante mi tiempo allí, y The New York Times ha exigido que no lo haga hasta que me deshaga de mis opciones de compra de acciones en la empresa).Ya estoy escuchando lo que parecen ser dos explicaciones que compiten entre sí por lo que pasó en Washington la semana pasada: que la multitud abrumadoramente blanca, a veces abiertamente racista, encarnaba la vieja y profunda maldad estadounidense; o que las redes sociales transformaron las identidades vacías de algunos estadounidenses para convertirlas en algo radical.Sin embargo, la historia de Gionet muestra cómo esas explicaciones no entran en conflicto. Un hombre que sus colegas consideraban vacío y sin rumbo convirtió su identidad en una especie de espejo de ese viejo mal estadounidense, y se ha convertido en lo que muchos estadounidenses le dijeron que querían que fuera.En un momento de la transmisión en vivo de Gionet durante el asedio al Capitolio, una voz invisible fuera de cámara advierte que Trump “se molestaría mucho” con las payasadas de los alborotadores.“No, estará contento”, respondió Gionet. “Estamos luchando por Trump”.Ben Smith es el columnista de medios. Se unió al Times en 2020, después de ocho años como editor jefe fundador de BuzzFeed News. Antes de eso, cubrió política para Politico, The New York Daily News, The New York Observer y The New York Sun. Correo electrónico: ben.smith@nytimes.com @benytAdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      in US Politics

      Opinion divided over Trump's ban from social media

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      As rioters were gathering around the US Capitol last Wednesday, a familiar question began to echo around the offices of the large social networks: what should they do about Donald Trump and his provocative posts?The answer has been emphatic: ban him.First he was suspended from Twitter, then from Facebook. Snapchat, Spotify, Twitch, Shopify, and Stripe have all followed suit, while Reddit, TikTok, YouTube and even Pinterest announced new restrictions on posting in support of the president or his actions. Parler, a social media platform that sells itself on a lack of moderation, was removed from app stores and refused service by Amazon.The action has sparked a huge debate about free speech and whether big technology companies – or, to be more precise, their billionaire chief executives – are fit to act as judge and jury in high-profile cases.So what are the arguments on both sides – and who is making them?FORFor many, such social media bans were the right thing to do – if too late. After all, the incitement has already occurred and the Capitol has already been stormed.“While I’m pleased to see social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube take long-belated steps to address the president’s sustained misuse of their platforms to sow discord and violence, these isolated actions are both too late and not nearly enough,” said Mark Warner, a Democratic senator from Virginia. “Disinformation and extremism researchers have for years pointed to broader network-based exploitation of these platforms.”Greg Bensinger, a member of the editorial board of the New York Times, said what happened on 6 January “ought to be social media’s day of reckoning”.He added: “There is a greater calling than profits, and Mr Zuckerberg and Twitter’s CEO, Jack Dorsey, must play a fundamental role in restoring truth and decency to our democracy and democracies around the world.“That can involve more direct, human moderation of high-profile accounts; more prominent warning labels; software that can delay posts so that they can be reviewed before going out to the masses, especially during moments of high tension; and a far greater willingness to suspend or even completely block dangerous accounts like Mr Trump’s.”Even observers who had previously argued against taking action had changed their mind by the weekend. “Turn off Trump’s account,” wrote tech analyst Ben Thompson.“My preferred outcome to yesterday’s events is impeachment. Encouraging violence to undo an election result that one disagrees with is sedition, surely a high crime or misdemeanor, and I hold out hope that Congress will act over the next few days, as unlikely as that seems … Sometimes, though, the right level doesn’t work, yet the right thing needs to be done.” Free speech activist Jillian C York agreed that action had to be taken, but, she said on Monday: “I’m cautious about praising any of these companies, to be honest. I think that in particular Facebook deserves very little praise. They waited until the last moment to do anything, despite months of calls.“When it comes to Twitter, I think we can be a little bit more forgiving. They tried for many, many months to take cautious decisions. Yes, this is a sitting president; taking them down is a problem. And it is problematic, even if there is a line at which it becomes the right choice.” Some have wondered whether the platforms’ convenient decision to grow a backbone has less to do with the violence of the day and more with political manoeuvring.“It took blood & glass in the halls of Congress – and a change in the political winds – for the most powerful tech companies to recognise, at the last possible moment, the threat of Trump,” tweeted Senator Richard Blumenthal, from Connecticut.AGAINSTPredictably, opposition to Trump’s ban came from his own family. “Free speech is dead and controlled by leftist overlords,” tweeted his son Donald Jr. “The ayatollah and numerous other dictatorial regimes can have Twitter accounts with no issue despite threatening genocide to entire countries and killing homosexuals etc… but The President of the United States should be permanently suspended. Mao would be proud.”But the ban, and the precedent that it could set, has worried some analysts and media experts.“Banning a sitting president from social media platforms is, whichever way you look at it, an assault on free speech,” the Sunday Times wrote in an editorial. “The fact that the ban was called for by, among others, Michelle Obama, who said on Thursday that the Silicon Valley platforms should stop enabling him because of his ‘monstrous behaviour’, will add to the suspicion that the ban was politically motivated.”On Monday, the German chancellor, Angela Merkel – hardly known for her affection for the US president – made it clear that she thought it was “problematic” that Trump had been blocked. Her spokesperson, Steffen Seibert, called freedom of speech “a fundamental right of elementary significance”.She said any restriction should be “according to the law and within the framework defined by legislators – not according to a decision by the management of social media platforms”.The ban has also worried those who are already concerned about the strength of Silicon Valley.“The institutions of American democracy have consistently failed to hold President Trump’s unrestrained authoritarianism, hate and racism accountable,” says Silkie Carlo, director of Big Brother Watch, “but this corporate power grab does nothing to benefit American democracy in practice or in principle.”“American democracy is in peril if it relies on a corporate denial of service to protect the nation from its own president, rather than rely on accountable institutions of justice and democracy,” Carlo added.For York, such concerns are valid, but risk an over-emphasis on US politics and concerns. “The majority of the public doesn’t care about these issues on a day-to-day basis,” she says, citing world leaders such as Jair Bolsonaro and Narendra Modi as others who have engaged in hate speech and incitement on Twitter.“It’s only when it hits Trump, and that’s the problem. Because we should be thinking about this as a society day to day.” More

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      in US Politics

      Donald Trump being banned from social media is a dangerous distraction | Matt Stoller and Sarah Miller

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      In the wake of Donald Trump’s instigation of a shocking attack on the US Capitol, it’s easy to demand that Trump be barred from social media.“These corporations should announce a permanent ban of his accounts,” said Representative Bennie Thompson, chair of the House homeland security committee. “Nothing short of that will meet this moment.”Indeed, Facebook, Google and Twitter have taken action, suspending the president from their platforms or removing videos.But whatever one thinks of stopping Trump fomenting violence by limiting his ability to communicate, the ability of democratically unaccountable monopolies with extraordinary control over communications infrastructure, like Facebook and Google, YouTube’s parent company, to silence political speech is exceptionally dangerous. It also sidesteps the underlying problem – that it’s their dominance and business model that promotes conspiratorial, fake and violent content to millions.Policymakers must recognize the choices that enabled the rise of these toxic but wildly lucrative business modelsTrump is not the first demagogue America has seen and he won’t be the last. But his power is amplified by a corrupted information ecosystem created by Google, Facebook and media barons like Rupert Murdoch. Those who came to the Capitol to riot sincerely believed they were stopping the subversion of American democracy because an entire information ecosystem encouraged them to discount any political or media institution that told them otherwise. That ecosystem of disinformation, extremism, rage and bigotry won’t go away by banning Trump or his supporters. That’s because the driving force behind it is profit: Facebook and Google make billions by fostering it.To understand why, policymakers must recognize the choices that enabled the rise of these toxic but wildly lucrative business models. Traditionally, US media regulation encouraged localized press and a neutral system of information distribution, starting with the Post Office in 1791. But beginning in the 1970s, policymakers changed their philosophy to encourage consolidation.They altered rules around advertising, publishing and information distribution markets, weakening antitrust laws, killing important protections like the Fairness Doctrine and passing the Telecommunications Act of 1996, which lifted local media ownership caps and unleashed a wave of mergers and acquisitions. They also enacted Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, a provision that today allows tech platforms to escape liability for illegal content they help shape and monetize. And over the last 20 years, policymakers enabled Google and Facebook to roll up the entire digital advertising and communication space by permitting hundreds of mergers, without a single challenge.The net effect is that two giant corporations, Facebook and Google, dominate online communications, profiting by selling advertising against cheaply produced, addictive clickbait and conspiratorial content. Making matters worse, in seeking ad money and quick profits, Facebook and Google, as well as private equity, have killed the pro-social institutions on which we rely, such as local newspapers, by redirecting advertising revenue to themselves. More than one-fourth of American newspapers have disappeared in the last 15 years, with many of those left being hollowed out as “ghost papers” with no news-gathering ability.Filling their place are conspiracy theories like QAnon, which these platforms amplify to turn a handsome profit. Survey results show Google provided ad services to 86% of sites carrying coronavirus conspiracies.This isn’t a uniquely American problem: Facebook, with its addictive user interface designed to maximize engagement, has helped foster deadly mob attacks in India, Sri Lanka and Myanmar and bent to the will of autocrats elsewhere. It’s not just the dramatic, either. More than three in five Americans feel lonely, and there is evidence that social media usage isolates and alienates us, changing our brains and drawing some to political extremism.The problem, in other words, won’t go away with banning Trump, because the problem is that the steady supply of toxic, addictive content that keeps eyeballs on ads is at the heart of these monopolies’ business models. Trump is far from the only supplier of that content now, and there’s no doubt others will rise up to replace him, with a boost from Facebook and Google.The Biden administration and the new Congress can fix these twin problems of monopoly power and profit motive by returning to a traditional policy framework of fair competition, neutral communication networks and business models that finance local news and a diversity of voices.For the tech platforms, Congress and agencies like the Federal Trade Commission have the authority to ban targeted advertising, much in the same way Verizon, for example, is prohibited by law from listening to your private calls and using that information to directly or indirectly advertise to you based on that surveillance.Breaking up these goliaths and prohibiting mergers by dominant firms would force them to compete over users based on data privacy and safety, as Facebook once had to do when it was in a competitive social networking world in the early 2000s. And imposing neutrality, like non-discrimination rules and interoperability requirements, would end the tyranny of algorithms that push us towards incendiary content.The good news is Republican and Democratic attorneys general in 48 states have filed historic antitrust suits against Google and Facebook, seeking to break them up, and the Biden administration and many in Congress seem wide awake to the pernicious role of social media platforms, particularly Facebook and Google, in the fraying of America’s social fabric.But until political leaders recognize that these tech barons make their billions by selling tickets to the end of American democracy, it will continue to creep ever closer. Seeing Trump booted off Facebook may be emotionally satisfying and even potentially prevent dangerous behavior in the short term. But only a wholesale restructuring of our online communications infrastructure can preserve democracy. More

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      The Business Rules the Trump Administration Is Racing to Finish

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Jobs CrisisCurrent Unemployment RateThe First Six MonthsPermanent LayoffsWhen a $600 Lifeline EndedAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyThe Business Rules the Trump Administration Is Racing to FinishFrom tariffs and trade to the status of Uber drivers, regulators are trying to install new rules or reduce regulations before President-elect Joe Biden takes over.President Trump is rushing to put into effect new economic regulations and executive orders before his term comes to a close.Credit…Erin Schaff/The New York TimesJan. 11, 2021, 3:00 a.m. ETIn the remaining days of his administration, President Trump is rushing to put into effect a raft of new regulations and executive orders that are intended to put his stamp on business, trade and the economy.Previous presidents in their final term have used the period between the election and the inauguration to take last-minute actions to extend and seal their agendas. Some of the changes are clearly aimed at making it harder, at least for a time, for the next administration to pursue its goals.Of course, President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. could issue new executive orders to overturn Mr. Trump’s. And Democrats in Congress, who will control the House and the Senate, could use the Congressional Review Act to quickly reverse regulatory actions from as far back as late August.Here are some of the things that Mr. Trump and his appointees have done or are trying to do before Mr. Biden’s inauguration on Jan. 20. — Peter EavisProhibiting Chinese apps and other products. Mr. Trump signed an executive order on Tuesday banning transactions with eight Chinese software applications, including Alipay. It was the latest escalation of the president’s economic war with China. Details and the start of the ban will fall to Mr. Biden, who could decide not to follow through on the idea. Separately, the Trump administration has also banned the import of some cotton from the Xinjiang region, where China has detained vast numbers of people who are members of ethnic minorities and forced them to work in fields and factories. In another move, the administration prohibited several Chinese companies, including the chip maker SMIC and the drone maker DJI, from buying American products. The administration is weighing further restrictions on China in its final days, including adding Alibaba and Tencent to a list of companies with ties to the Chinese military, a designation that would prevent Americans from investing in those businesses. — Ana SwansonDefining gig workers as contractors. The Labor Department on Wednesday released the final version of a rule that could classify millions of workers in industries like construction, cleaning and the gig economy as contractors rather than employees, another step toward endorsing the business practices of companies like Uber and Lyft. — Noam ScheiberTrimming social media’s legal shield. The Trump administration recently filed a petition asking the Federal Communications Commission to narrow its interpretation of a powerful legal shield for social media platforms like Facebook and YouTube. If the commission doesn’t act before Inauguration Day, the matter will land in the desk of whomever Mr. Biden picks to lead the agency. — David McCabeTaking the tech giants to court. The Federal Trade Commission filed an antitrust suit against Facebook in December, two months after the Justice Department sued Google. Mr. Biden’s appointees will have to decide how best to move forward with the cases. — David McCabeAdding new cryptocurrency disclosure requirements. The Treasury Department late last month proposed new reporting requirements that it said were intended to prevent money laundering for certain cryptocurrency transactions. It gave only 15 days — over the holidays — for public comment. Lawmakers and digital currency enthusiasts wrote to the Treasury secretary, Steven Mnuchin, to protest and won a short extension. But opponents of the proposed rule say the process and substance are flawed, arguing that the requirement would hinder innovation, and are likely to challenge it in court. — Ephrat LivniLimiting banks on social and environmental issues. The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency is rushing a proposed rule that would ban banks from not lending to certain kinds of businesses, like those in the fossil fuel industry, on environmental or social grounds. The regulator unveiled the proposal on Nov. 20 and limited the time it would accept comments to six weeks despite the interruptions of the holidays. — Emily FlitterOverhauling rules on banks and underserved communities. The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency is also proposing new guidelines on how banks can measure their activities to get credit for fulfilling their obligations under the Community Reinvestment Act, an anti-redlining law that forces them to do business in poor and minority communities. The agency rewrote some of the rules in May, but other regulators — the Federal Reserve and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation — did not sign on. — Emily FlitterInsuring “hot money” deposits. On Dec. 15, the F.D.I.C. expanded the eligibility of brokered deposits for insurance coverage. These deposits are infusions of cash into a bank in exchange for a high interest rate, but are known as “hot money” because the clients can move the deposits from bank to bank for higher returns. Critics say the change could put the insurance fund at risk. F.D.I.C. officials said the new rule was needed to “modernize” the brokered deposits system. — Emily FlitterNarrowing regulatory authority over airlines. The Department of Transportation in December authorized a rule, sought by airlines and travel agents, that limits the department’s authority over the industry by defining what constitutes an unfair and deceptive practice. Consumer groups widely opposed the rule. Airlines argued that the rule would limit regulatory overreach. And the department said the definitions it used were in line with its past practice. — Niraj ChokshiRolling back a light bulb rule. The Department of Energy has moved to block a rule that would phase out incandescent light bulbs, which people and businesses have increasingly been replacing with much more efficient LED and compact fluorescent bulbs. The energy secretary, Dan Brouillette, a former auto industry lobbyist, said in December that the Trump administration did not want to limit consumer choice. The rule had been slated to go into effect on Jan. 1 and was required by a law passed in 2007. — Ivan PennAdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      How Parler, a Chosen App of Trump Fans, Became a Test of Free Speech

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Presidential TransitionLatest UpdatesHouse Moves to Remove TrumpHow Impeachment Might WorkBiden Focuses on CrisesCabinet PicksAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyHow Parler, a Chosen App of Trump Fans, Became a Test of Free SpeechThe app has renewed a debate about who holds power over online speech after the tech giants yanked their support for it and left it fighting for survival. Parler was set to go dark on Monday.John Matze, chief executive of the alternative social networking app Parler, has said the app welcomes free speech. Credit…Fox News, via YouTubeJack Nicas and Jan. 10, 2021Updated 10:15 p.m. ETFrom the start, John Matze had positioned Parler as a “free speech” social network where people could mostly say whatever they wanted. It was a bet that had recently paid off big as millions of President Trump’s supporters, fed up with what they deemed censorship on Facebook and Twitter, flocked to Parler instead.On the app, which had become a top download on Apple’s App Store, discussions over politics had ramped up. But so had conspiracy theories that falsely said the election had been stolen from Mr. Trump, with users urging aggressive demonstrations last week when Congress met to certify the election of President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.Those calls for violence soon came back to haunt Mr. Matze, 27, a software engineer from Las Vegas and Parler’s chief executive. By Saturday night, Apple and Google had removed Parler from their app stores and Amazon said it would no longer host the site on its computing services, saying it had not sufficiently policed posts that incited violence and crime. As a result, Parler was set to disappear from the web on Monday.That set off a furious effort to keep Parler online. Mr. Matze said on Sunday that he was racing to save the data of Parler’s roughly 15 million users from Amazon’s computers. He was also calling company after company to find one willing to support Parler with hundreds of computer servers.“I believe Amazon, Google, Apple worked together to try and ensure they don’t have competition,” Mr. Matze said on Parler late Saturday. “They will NOT win! We are the worlds last hope for free speech and free information.” He said the app would probably shut down “for up to a week as we rebuild from scratch.”Credit…ScreenshotParler’s plight immediately drew condemnation from those on the right, who compared the big tech companies to authoritarian overlords. Representative Devin Nunes, a California Republican, told Fox News on Sunday that “Republicans have no way to communicate” and asked his followers to text him to stay in touch. Lou Dobbs, the right-wing commentator, wrote on Parler that the app had a strong antitrust case against the tech companies amid such “perilous times.”Parler has now become a test case in a renewed national debate over free speech on the internet and whether tech giants such as Facebook, Google, Apple and Amazon have too much power. That debate has intensified since Mr. Trump was barred from posting on Twitter and Facebook last week after a violent mob, urged on by the president and his social media posts, stormed the Capitol.For years, Facebook and Twitter had defended people’s ability to speak freely on their sites, while Amazon, Apple, Google and others had stayed mostly hands-off with apps like Parler. That allowed misinformation and falsehoods to flow across online networks.A screenshot of Mr. Matze’s Parler profile.Users can choose whom to follow on Parler.Credit…ScreenshotThe tech companies’ actions last week to limit such toxic content with Mr. Trump and Parler have been applauded by liberals and others. But the moves also focused attention on the power of these private enterprises to decide who stays online and who doesn’t. And the timing struck some as politically convenient, with Mr. Biden set to take office on Jan. 20 and Democrats gaining control of Congress.The tech companies’ newly proactive approach also provides grist for Mr. Trump in the waning days of his administration. Even as he faces another potential impeachment, Mr. Trump is expected to try stoking anger at Twitter, Facebook and others this week, potentially as a launchpad for competing with Silicon Valley head on when he leaves the White House. After he was barred from Twitter, Mr. Trump said in a statement that he would “look at the possibilities of building out our own platform in the near future.”Ben Wizner, a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union, said it was understandable that no company wanted to be associated with the “repellent speech” that encouraged the breaching of the Capitol. But he said Parler’s situation was troubling.That was because Apple’s and Google’s removal of Parler from their app stores and Amazon’s halting its web hosting went beyond what Twitter or Facebook do when they curtail a user’s account or their posts, he said. “I think we should recognize the importance of neutrality when we’re talking about the infrastructure of the internet,” he said.In earlier statements, Apple, Amazon and Google said that they had warned Parler about the violent posts on its site and that it had not done enough to consistently remove them. The companies said they required sites like Parler to systematically enforce their rules. They declined to comment further on Sunday.Tech companies pulling support for certain websites is not new. In 2018, Gab, another alternative to Facebook and Twitter that is popular among the far right, was forced offline after it lost support from other companies, including PayPal and GoDaddy, because it had hosted anti-Semitic posts by a man who shot and killed 11 people at a Pittsburgh synagogue. Gab later came back online with the help of a Seattle company, Epik, which hosts other far-right websites.Even if Parler goes dark, right-wing personalities like Mr. Nunes who have built followings on the app do not lack other communication channels. Many still have ample followings on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, which welcome any user who doesn’t violate their rules, which prohibit threatening violence or posting hate speech.Parler was founded in 2018 by Mr. Matze and a fellow programmer, one of several social-media upstarts that aimed to capitalize on the growing anger of Mr. Trump’s supporters with Silicon Valley. But Parler had a significant advantage: money. Rebekah Mercer, one of Mr. Trump’s largest donors, helped bankroll the site. Other investors include Dan Bongino, a former Secret Service agent and Fox News pundit. It plans to eventually make money by selling ads.The app is essentially a Twitter clone. It enables people to broadcast messages — known as “parleys,” not “tweets” — to followers. Users can also comment on and “echo” — not “retweet” — other users’ posts. When signing up for a new account, people are asked to select their favorite color and are urged to choose from a list of conservative voices to follow, including Mr. Nunes, the Fox News host Sean Hannity and the actress Kirstie Alley.These “influencers” dominate the experience on the site. On Sunday, the Parler newsfeed was a stream of their angry “parleys,” railing at Big Tech and pleading with their followers to follow them elsewhere.“Please sign up for my daily newsletter today, before the tech totalitarians ban everything,” wrote Mr. Bongino, who also controls one of Facebook’s most popular pages.Messages on Parler from Mr. Matze.Parler’s list of top personalities.Parler grew slowly until early 2020, when Twitter began labeling Mr. Trump’s tweets as inaccurate and some of his supporters joined Parler in protest. After November’s election, Parler grew even more quickly as Facebook and Twitter clamped down on false claims that the vote had been rigged. So many users signed up that, at times, they overloaded the company’s systems and forced it to pause new registrations.In total, people downloaded Parler’s app more than 10 million times last year, with 80 percent in the United States, according to Sensor Tower, the app data firm.Last Wednesday, Mr. Trump encouraged his supporters to march to the Capitol to pressure lawmakers to overturn his election loss, leading to a rampage that left five people dead. The rally was planned on Facebook, Twitter and elsewhere. On Parler, people posted advice on which streets to take to avoid the police; some posted about carrying guns inside the Capitol.In an interview with The New York Times hours after the mob stormed the Capitol, Mr. Matze said, “I don’t feel responsible for any of this and neither should the platform, considering we’re a neutral town square that just adheres to the law.”But on Friday, Apple and Google told Parler that it needed to more consistently remove posts that encouraged violence. By Saturday, Apple and Google had removed Parler from their app stores, limiting its ability to reach new users on virtually all of the world’s smartphones.“There is no place on our platform for threats of violence and illegal activity,” Apple said in a statement. Google said, “We do require that apps implement robust moderation for egregious content.”Late Saturday, Amazon told Parler that it would need to find a new place to host its site. Amazon said it had sent Parler 98 examples of posts on its site that encouraged violence, but many remained online.“We cannot provide services to a customer that is unable to effectively identify and remove content that encourages or incites violence against others,” Amazon said.Amazon was scheduled to pull its support for Parler just before midnight Sunday on the West Coast. Amazon said it would preserve Parler’s data so it could move it to other computer servers.“It’s devastating,” Mr. Matze told Fox News on Sunday. “And it’s not just these three companies. Every vendor, from text message services to email providers to our lawyers, all ditched us, too, on the same day.” He said he was struggling to find another company to host Parler’s website.But Jeffrey Wernick, Parler’s chief operating officer, said in an interview that the app had heard from several companies that wanted to help. He declined to name them.“What Parler will look like a month from now, I can’t tell you,” he said. “But Parler will not be gone.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More