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      A social network for bigots? No wonder Kanye West wants to buy Parler | Arwa Mahdawi

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      A social network for bigots? No wonder Kanye West wants to buy ParlerArwa MahdawiThe rapper’s antisemitic remarks have got him banned from Twitter and Instagram. But here’s a safe space where he’ll be able to say just what he likes Kanye West, a man who can’t seem to stop saying bigoted things, is buying Parler, a social network designed especially for people who like to say bigoted things. I was a little surprised when this news broke on Monday because I thought Parler was basically a Nazified version of Myspace that nobody used any more. There are a bunch of fringe rightwing social networks out there – Gettr, Gab, Truth Social – and Parler might be the least successful of a very unsuccessful bunch. The Twitter clone was launched in 2018 with the stated aim of countering the “ever-increasing tyranny … of our tech overlords”; it had a brief moment of popularity then that fizzled out. No doubt because of the tyranny of our tech overlords.Despite the fact it’s not a household name, I’m sure I don’t need to explain why West, who has changed his name to Ye, is interested in Parler, which, one imagines, may soon change its name to Er. The musician, who has been moving dramatically to the right in recent years, had his Twitter and Instagram accounts locked this month because of antisemitic comments. Or that’s what us lefties have been saying anyway – West seems to think he was being censored and free speech is dead and liberals are trying to cancel him yada yada yada. Instead of engaging in any sort of introspection following his Twitter suspension, Ye apparently decided to fight for his right to be a bigot. Parler’s parent company, Parlement Technologies, put that in rather more sanitised terms. In a statement, it said West is making “a groundbreaking move into the free speech media space and will never have to fear being removed from social media again”.If you think you’ve heard this story before, it’s because you have. Rich conservatives are obsessed with creating safe spaces where they can never be criticised or contradicted; where nobody cares about facts and everyone cares about their feelings. Donald Trump launched Truth Social at the beginning of this year after he was banned by Twitter. Elon Musk said he was buying Twitter then said he wasn’t buying Twitter and now seems to be buying Twitter again. Trump-supporting Peter Thiel has put money into Rumble, a more rightwing version of YouTube.While it may look suspiciously like they’re too fragile to deal with other people’s opinions, conservatives always couch their obsession with building echo chambers in terms of “free speech”. George Farmer, the CEO of Parler’s parent company, for example, said he thinks West will “change the way the world thinks about free speech”. I don’t know about that. I do know, however, that the acquisition (which is for an undisclosed sum) is likely to change Farmer’s bank balance.Farmer, it’s important to note, happens to be married to Candace Owens, a rightwing pundit who once suggested the US military invade Australia in order to free its people “suffering under a totalitarian regime”. When she’s not dreaming about liberating Australia, Owens is busy palling around with West; the pair recently wore “White Lives Matter” shirts at Paris fashion week. Owens also defended West after he tweeted that he was going “death con 3 on JEWISH PEOPLE … You guys have toyed with me and tried to black ball anyone whoever opposes your agenda.” This is obviously indefensible, but Owens did her best, saying on her podcast: “If you’re an honest person, when you read this tweet, you had no idea what the hell he was talking about … if you are an honest person, you did not think this tweet was antisemitic.” (If I’m honest, I think it was.) The Farmer-Owens-West connection has led a number of people to suspect that the Parler acquisition was a brilliant manoeuvre on Owens’ part to get West to redistribute some of his wealth to her family. Candace was cashing in on Kanye, in other words.While West’s descent into extremism is disturbing, his acquisition of Parler (assuming it goes through) is not keeping me up at night. If Truth Social is anything to go by, I highly doubt that Parler is going to be influential anytime soon. What is keeping me up at night, however, is the rightward drift of more mainstream platforms such as CNN. What’s keeping me up at night is the rightward drift of politics. West is a very prominent symbol of a much bigger problem. Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist
      Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.
      TopicsKanye WestOpinionParlerSocial mediaUS politicsDigital mediaPeter ThielcommentReuse this content More

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      Nick Clegg to decide on Trump’s 2023 return to Instagram and Facebook

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      Nick Clegg to decide on Trump’s 2023 return to Instagram and FacebookMeta’s president of global affairs said it would be a decision ‘I oversee’ after the ex-president’s accounts were suspended in 2021 Nick Clegg, Meta’s president of global affairs, is charged with deciding whether Donald Trump will be allowed to return to Facebook and Instagram in 2023, Clegg said on Thursday.Speaking at an event held in Washington by news organization Semafor, Clegg said the company was seriously debating whether Trump’s accounts should be reinstated and said it was a decision that “I oversee and I drive”.Judge asks Trump’s team for proof that FBI planted documents at Mar-a-Lago Read moreClegg added that while he will be making the final call, he will consult the CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, the Facebook board of directors and outside experts.“It’s not a capricious decision,” he said. “We will look at the signals related to real-world harm to make a decision whether at the two-year point – which is early January next year – whether Trump gets reinstated to the platform.”The former president was suspended from a number of online platforms, including those owned by Meta, following the 6 January 2021 Capitol riot during which Trump used his social media accounts to praise and perpetuate the violence.While Twitter banned Trump permanently, Meta suspended Trump’s accounts for two years, to be later re-evaluated. In May 2021, a temporary ban was upheld by Facebook’s oversight board – a group of appointed academics and former politicians meant to operate independently of Facebook’s corporate leadership.However, the board returned the final decision on Trump’s accounts to Meta, suggesting the company decide in six months whether to make the ban permanent. Clegg said that decision will be made by 7 January 2023.Clegg previously served as Britain’s deputy prime minister and joined Facebook as vice‑president for global affairs and communications in 2018. In February, he was promoted to the top company policy executive role.In the years since he began at Meta, Clegg has seen the company through a number of scandals, including scrutiny of its policies during the 2016 US presidential election, Facebook’s role in the persecution of the Rohingya in Myanmar, and the revelations made by whistleblower Frances Haugen.TopicsDonald TrumpNick CleggMark ZuckerbergFacebookInstagramUS Capitol attackUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      TikTok tightens policies around political issues in run-up to US midterms

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      TikTok tightens policies around political issues in run-up to US midtermsPoliticians will be banned from using social media platform for campaign fundraising Politicians on TikTok will no longer be able to use the app tipping tools, nor access advertising features on the social network, as the company tightens its policies around political issues in the run-up to the US midterm elections in six weeks’ time.Political advertising is already banned on the platform, alongside “harmful misinformation”, but as TikTok has grown over the past two years, new features such as gifting, tipping and ecommerce have been embraced by some politicians on the site.Now, new rules will again limit political players’ ability to use the app for anything other than organic activity, to “help ensure TikTok remains a fun, positive and joyful experience”, the company said.“TikTok has long prohibited political advertising, including both paid ads on the platform and creators being paid directly to make branded content,” it added. “We currently do that by prohibiting political content in an ad, and we’re also now applying restrictions at an account level. “This means accounts belonging to politicians and political parties will automatically have their access to advertising features turned off, which will help us more consistently enforce our existing policy.”Political accounts will be blocked from other monetisation features, and will also be removed from eligibility for the company’s “creator fund”, which distributes cash to some of the most successful video producers on the site. They will also be banned from using the platform for campaign fundraising, “such as a video from a politician asking for donations, or a political party directing people to a donation page on their website,” the service has said.“TikTok is first and foremost an entertainment platform, and we’re proud to be a place that brings people together over creative and entertaining content. By prohibiting campaign fundraising and limiting access to our monetisation features, we’re aiming to strike a balance between enabling people to discuss the issues that are relevant to their lives while also protecting the creative, entertaining platform that our community wants.”The rules are in contrast to those of Meta’s Facebook and Instagram, both of which have long allowed political advertising and encouraged politicians to use their services for campaigning purposes. In August, Meta announced its own set of policy updates for the US midterm elections, and promised to devote “hundreds of people across more than 40 teams” to ensuring the safety and security of the elections.Meta will ban all new political, electoral and social issue adverts on both its platforms for the final weeks of the campaign, its head of global affairs, Nick Clegg, said, and will remove adverts that encourage people not to vote, or call into question the legitimacy of the election. But the company won’t remove “organic” content that does the same.After years of being effectively unregulated, more and more countries are bringing online political advertising under the aegis of electoral authorities. On Monday, Google said it would begin a program that ensured that political emails never get sent to spam folders, after Republican congressional leaders accused it of partisan censorship and introduced legislation to try to ban the practice. “We expect to begin the pilot with a small number of campaigns from both parties and will test whether these changes improve the user experience, and provide more certainty for senders during this election period,” the company said in a statement.TopicsTikTokUS midterm elections 2022US politicsUS political financingnewsReuse this content More

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      Trouble for Trump’s Truth Social as investors back away from cash boost

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      Trouble for Trump’s Truth Social as investors back away from cash boostInjection of $1.3bn for former president’s media company looks set to be derailed because of lackluster investor support Donald Trump’s beleaguered social media company is facing further financial turmoil after a long-awaited $1.3bn cash injection looks set to be derailed due to lackluster investor backing.Shareholders of the special purpose acquisitions firm, which last year brokered a deal to take the Trump Media and Technology Group public, have not backed a one-year extension to complete the transaction, which threatens to spoil the merger.Trump Media and Technology Group is the company that launched the ex-president’s Truth Social platform.The $1.3bn cash infusion from Digital World Acquisition Corp has been on hold since last October due to civil and criminal investigations into the circumstances around the merger. The Nasdaq-listed acquisitions company requires the support of 65% of shareholders, who are mostly individual investors, for the extension it needs to try to secure the deal.The outcome of the vote will be announced at a special shareholders meeting on Tuesday, when it is likely to be more bad news for the former president. Digital World executives do not believe they will be able to muster enough shareholder support in time and have started to consider alternative options, Reuters reported.Options include a unilateral six-month extension against the wishes of shareholders, and another is extending the final vote deadline to attempt mustering up more support in hopes that the Financial Regulatory Authority and US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) will soon give the green light for the deal to proceed.If Digital World fails to come up with a stopgap solution before Tuesday’s shareholder meeting, it will be forced to liquidate its shares and return the money it raised in its initial public offering.Digital World, a so-called blank check company created specifically for the purpose of acquiring or merging with an existing business, has previously said that Trump’s media group has “sufficient funds” until April 2023.Trump leveraged his vast social media following throughout his presidency to fire up his base, rile opponents and hire and fire staff – a modus operandi which eventually led to his banishment from the most popular platforms.Trump has more than 4 million followers on Truth Social, where has been posting since April, which is just a fraction of the 89 million he had on Twitter. Twitter and Facebook banned Trump after his supporters staged the deadly January 2021 attack on the US Capitol in a desperate attempt to prevent the congressional certification of his defeat to Joe Biden in the previous year’s election.The app is currently available to download on Apple’s app store, and it was recently banned from Google Play where the vast majority of apps are downloaded for Android users. Google said the platform violates its policies on banning content that involves physical threats and could incite violence.It is unclear how Trump’s media company has been operating without access to Digital World’s funding, but last week it said that Truth Social is “on strong financial footing” and would soon begin running advertisements.Reuters contributed to this reportTopicsUS newsDonald TrumpUS politicsAppsnewsReuse this content More

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      Historic bill aimed at keeping California children digitally safe approved

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      Historic bill aimed at keeping California children digitally safe approvedLegislation will require companies to install guardrails for those under age 18 and use higher privacy settings California lawmakers passed first-of-its-kind legislation on Monday designed to improve the online safety and privacy protections for children.The bill, the California Age-Appropriate Design Code Act, will require firms such as TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube to install guardrails for users under the age of 18, including defaulting to higher privacy settings for minors and refraining from collecting location data for those users.It also requires companies to analyze their algorithms and products to determine how they may affect young users, assessing whether it is designed to be addictive or cause additional harm to children.Children’s safety advocates have applauded the bill, which passed in a vote of 33 to 0, saying similar federal legislation is needed to protect young users. The bill is “a huge step forward toward creating the internet that children and families deserve”, said Josh Golin, executive director at advocacy group Fairplay.“For far too long, tech companies have treated their egregious privacy and safety issues as a PR problem to be addressed only through vague promises, obfuscations, and delays,” he said. “Now, tech platforms will be required to prioritize young Californians’ interests and wellbeing ahead of reckless growth and shareholder dividends.”More details to come …TopicsTechnologyChildrenCaliforniaInternet safetyPrivacySocial mediaUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      ‘This you?’: the seven letters exposing rightwing hypocrisy

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      ‘This you?’: the seven letters exposing rightwing hypocrisyAs Biden eases student loan debt for millions, a simple phrase is puncturing criticism from conservatives like Marjorie Taylor Greene Conservatives are frothing at the mouth over Joe Biden’s decision to forgive $10,000 in student debt for millions, railing against what they call “student loan socialism”. But their carefully crafted tweets have been undermined over and over again with two words: “This you?”Were there ever seven letters more powerful? On Twitter, the phrase is an instant marker of hypocrisy, cutting down the mighty from politicians to celebrities to brands. It typically comes as a reply to an opinionated tweet, accompanied by a screenshot of an earlier remark from the same person endorsing the opposite point of view. Now Biden’s debt cancellation has given the phrase new life: “This you?” is rolling through Twitter like a bowling ball, toppling critic after critic as it nullifies their claims. The source of many of the “receipts”, in this case, is the public record of those who had their Payment Protection Plan (PPP) loans – the federal funds intended to keep businesses afloat early in the pandemic – forgiven.The conservative advocacy group PragerU proclaimed: “It’s not complicated. Bailing out irresponsible behavior will spur more irresponsible behavior.” “This you”? asked @kaoticleftist, showing hundreds of thousands of dollars in forgiven PPP funds.Ok it began as a joke now it’s on the threshold of turning into a second job 🤦‍♀️ pic.twitter.com/oTB0hcPtzf— rayne (@trayne_wreck) August 25, 2022
      The rightwing Daily Caller published a piece headlined: “Biden debt forgiveness could send tuition through the roof”, prompting another Twitter user, @coreyastewart, to post a screenshot of the PPP funds that organization reportedly had forgiven.“Student loan forgiveness sounds really nice to illegal immigrants, people with no life experience, people who don’t have families yet, and people who use preferred pronouns,” wrote the conservative commentator Steven Crowder, earning a host of “This you?” replies – with screenshots highlighting more than $71,000 in loan forgiveness for his company.Those closer to the seats of power also received helpful feedback. The Iowa senator Chuck Grassley also criticized Biden’s plan, saying it would “fuel further inflation hurting those who can least afford it UNFAIR.” “This you?” asked a candidate for local office, pointing to Grassley’s application for a federal farm bailout.This you? https://t.co/bqgtjPlZ4b pic.twitter.com/69QCNKl0pW— Kimberly Graham for Polk County Attorney (@KimberlyforIowa) August 24, 2022
      Users also accused the rightwing pundit Ben Shapiro of a double standard, but he denied having received any PPP money and said he’d issued cease-and-desist letters to organizations claiming otherwise – pointing to the messy nature of internet sleuthing. But it wasn’t just everyday Twitter users calling out hypocrisy.On Thursday evening, the White House entered the fray. The Georgia congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene said it was “completely unfair” for the government to “say your debt is completely forgiven” – after her loan of more than $180,000 was forgiven, the official White House account noted. It was just one of a series of digs at critics: the Florida congressman Matt Gaetz, the White House said, had more than $482,000 in PPP loans forgiven, while the Pennsylvania congressman Mike Kelly got off the hook for more than $987,000. Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene had $183,504 in PPP loans forgiven.https://t.co/4FoCymt8TB— The White House (@WhiteHouse) August 25, 2022
      It’s not the first time the meme has been widely deployed to illustrate double standards on a national scale. As brands and celebrities touted their support for the Black Lives Matter movement in 2020, social media quickly exposed many as simply trend followers, juxtaposing their posts with examples of past offensive behavior – marking what Aisha Harris described in the New York Times as “a swift undercutting of performative wokeness”. Users drew attention to an NFL star posting a symbolic black square after hanging out with Donald Trump; the Baltimore police department’s supportive words years after the death of Freddie Gray; and a host of other apparent changes of heart.As Harris wrote, there’s power in such a sharable medium. It’s true that, as the Twitter user @trayne_wreck – who collected countless examples of loan-based double standards – writes, highlighting hypocrisy is unlikely to change the minds of those who are called out.But, she says, it could make a difference to those of us reading: “You, who can do something about it, who can build power to make them obsolete. I hope it will resonate with you.”TopicsSocial mediaTwitterUS politicsfeaturesReuse this content More

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      The Storm is Upon Us review: indispensable QAnon history, updated

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      The Storm is Upon Us review: indispensable QAnon history, updated Donald Trump welcomed the conspiracy at the White House. Its followers stormed Congress. Big Tech still seems not to care. Mike Rothschild’s book should sound the alarm for us allWhat is it that has hypnotized so many addled souls who devote themselves to decoding the Delphic clues of the QAnon conspiracy?QAnon’s ‘Q’ re-emerges on far-right message board after two years of silenceRead moreWhat they think they’re getting is “secret knowledge”, from “Q” and a bunch of other military insiders working for Donald Trump, about “the storm … a ringside seat to the final match” in a “secret war between good and evil” that will end with the slaughter of all “enemies of freedom”.In short, an irresistible mix of “biblical retribution and participatory justice”.The bad guys are “Democrats, Hollywood elites, business tycoons, wealthy liberals, the medical establishment, celebrities and the mass media … They’re controlled by Barack Obama” – a Muslim sleeper agent – and Hillary Clinton, “a blood-drinking ghoul who murders everyone in her way … and they’re funded by George Soros and the Rothschild banking family (no relation to the author)”.This updated edition of Mike Rothschild’s exhaustive history of the Q movement is more important than ever. Why? Partly because of the crucial role played by so many QAnon devotees in the storming of the Capitol on 6 January 2021 but mostly because Rothschild documents how much of this insanity has penetrated to the heart of the new Republican party, propelled by many of America’s most loathsome individuals, from Ted Cruz and Donald Trump Jr to Alex Jones, Michael Flynn and Roseanne Barr.As Rothschild writes of Trump’s first national security adviser, “Flynn’s family even filmed themselves taking the ‘digital soldier oath’… part of what would become a total enmeshment between members of the Flynn family and QAnon.”In the two years before the 2020 presidential election, “nearly 100 Republican candidates declared themselves to be Q Believers” while Trump “retweeted hundreds of Q followers, putting their violent fantasies and bizarre memes into tens of millions of feeds”.Asked about a movement which has repackaged most of the oldest and harshest racist and antisemitic conspiracies for a new age, Trump gave his usual coy endorsement of the behavior of America’s most damaged internet addicts.“I don’t know much about the movement,” he mumbled, “other than I understand they like me very much, which I appreciate.”In winter 2021, as the Omicron variant sent Covid cases skyrocketing, “QAnon promoters were among the most visible anti-vaccine advocates pushing out lies and conspiracy theories” to “dissuade people from getting vaccinated”.As with so many of QAnon adherents’ positions, the message was “both clear and completely contradicted by the available evidence: they believed the pandemic was over and any mandates related to vaccines or masks were totalitarian control mechanisms that were actually killing people”.More than anything else, this is the latest horrific confirmation of what the social psychologist Jonathan Haidt recently described as “the power of social media as a universal solvent, breaking down bonds and weakening institutions everywhere it reached”.Like so many other ghastly conspiracies of recent decades, especially the blood libel that the Sandy Hook massacre was a staged event in which no one was actually killed, QAnon was propelled at warp speed by a combination of the incompetence and greed of all the big-tech big shots: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube.Rothschild describes the usual futile internet game of Whac-A-Mole.Reddit “abruptly banned the 70,000-member r/Great Awakening board because members had started harassing other users” and had released the personal information “of at least one person they incorrectly claimed to be a mass shooter”.No matter: Q followers just migrated to Twitter and “closed Facebook groups with tens of thousands of members … Just in 2018, Q believers shared Q YouTube videos over 1.4m times, and drove hundreds of thousands of shares to Fox News, Breitbart and the Gateway Pundit”.By 2019, “Trump was routinely retweeting QAnon-promoting accounts.” By the 2020 election, “Trump had retweeted hundreds … and was regularly sharing memes created by the movement”.When Twitter and Facebook finally started “cracking down on Q iconography in the summer of 2020”, much of the movement just moved on to Instagram. Amazon and Etsy joined in the fun with books and merchandise and there were even “Q apps on the Google Play Store”.‘The lunacy is getting more intense’: how Birds Aren’t Real took on the conspiracy theoristsRead moreQ’s legacy includes what now looks like the permanent deformation of the Republican party. A December 2020 poll by NPR/Ipsos found about a third of Americans believed in a shadowy “deep state” and a robust 23% of Republicans “believed in a pedophilic ring of Satan-worshiping elites”.Rothschild ends by asking behavioral experts if there is anything the rest of us can do to help those who have gone far down this wretched rabbit hole. They say the only effective solution is a complete “unplugging” from the internet.Every time I read another book like this one, I’m increasingly inclined to the idea that this could be the only road back to sanity for all of us.
      The Storm is Upon Us: How QAnon Became a Movement, Cult, and Conspiracy Theory of Everything is published in paperback in the US by Melville House
      TopicsBooksQAnonThe far rightPolitics booksUS politicsSocial mediaInternetreviewsReuse this content More

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      Has Democrat John Fetterman found a way to beat the reality-TV politician?

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      Has Democrat John Fetterman found a way to beat the reality-TV politician?The Pennsylvania Senate hopeful is wielding social media might against star power. His secret weapon? Snooki Whether it’s Ronald, Donald or Arnold, Americans are all too familiar with the phenomenon of the second-tier celebrity turned politician. So when the TV doctor Mehmet Oz decided to run for Senate in Pennsylvania, his background as a B-lister seemed well suited to the role.As he proudly notes in his official biography, Oz has won Emmys, has written eight bestsellers, and was featured on six seasons of The Oprah Winfrey Show. He is a master of traditional media. But now the daytime TV star is facing a Democratic opponent who has proved himself a media success story in his own right – though his area of expertise is Twitter, not television.Dr Oz embraced Trump’s big lie – will Maga voters reward him in Senate race?Read moreWhen John Fetterman entered the race, the relatively little known lieutenant governor had his work cut out for him: a Bernie Sanders backer who supports universal healthcare and a $15 minimum wage, he is running to replace a Republican in a swing state.But he has rapidly made himself a national name as he tears into Oz on social media – hammering him, in particular, on the question of whether he’s really from Pennsylvania at all. Oz has said he moved there in 2020 – to a place his wife’s parents own. Before that, he lived in New Jersey for decades.In Fetterman’s view, Oz is still a Jersey boy, and the Democrat has weaponized meme after meme against his rival. Fetterman has posted a picture of Oz’s face on a Pennsylvania driver’s license, labeled “McLovin” in an homage to cinema’s best known fake ID. He has mocked his rival for apparently filming an ad for his Pennsylvania campaign in his New Jersey mansion. And he has employed the services of the most Jersey person this side of Bruce Springsteen: Nicole “Snooki” Polizzi.Hey @DrOz 👋JERSEY loves you + will not forget you!!! 🥰 pic.twitter.com/YmaXfMpzUK— John Fetterman (@JohnFetterman) July 14, 2022
      In a clip that has received more than 84,000 likes on Twitter, the Jersey Shore reality star offers some savage sympathy: “I heard that you moved from New Jersey to look for a new job,” she says. “I know you’re away from home and you’re in a new place, but … don’t worry, because you’ll be back in New Jersey soon.”Fetterman’s attacks aren’t limited to the digital world. He had a pilot fly a banner over the Jersey shore saying, “Hey Dr Oz. Welcome home to NJ! ❤️ John.” He posted the image online, flexing Pennsylvania credentials by dedicating it to “yinz and youse down the shore today” – a combination of Pittsburgh and Philly-speak. He’s also selling a “Dr Oz for NJ” sticker. And in a coup de grâce on Thursday, Fetterman confirmed that he had launched a petition to have Oz honored in the New Jersey Hall of Fame, which celebrates the accomplishments of state residents.Oz himself has a ways to go when it comes to the art of the political stunt. He posted pictures of himself visiting Pat’s and Geno’s, the dueling cheesesteak shops, across the street from each other, that are a Philadelphia landmark. It was a rookie error, akin to a New Yorker taking a selfie at Times Square – any local can list at least five cheesesteak places they’ve deemed better than those two. Fetterman called Oz a “tourist”, and even Pat’s itself replied: “Do you even live in [Pennsylvania]? And can you spell the town you live in?” (Oz misspelled the name of his supposed home town, Huntingdon Valley, in a campaign filing.) When you’re getting burned by a cheesesteak shop, you know you need to up your social media game.While Fetterman has proved himself a natural in the art of trolling, you can almost feel the blood, sweat and tears poured into Oz’s efforts. When he posted a doctored image of Bernie Sanders with Fetterman labeled “best friends”, Fetterman replied with a meme mocking Oz’s graphic design skills. When the Republican shared a picture of a dictionary definition of “John Fetterman” – a “Bernie Sanders socialist” who is “wrong for Pennsylvania” – it felt like exactly what it was: an attempt to crowbar old-fashioned political boilerplate into a modern format. (It also placed “John Fetterman” between “justice” and “jurisdiction”, which, as several people pointed out, is not how the alphabet works.)To all yinz + youse down the shore today: hope you saw my very nice message ✈️ to one of NJ’s famous longtime residents 🥰 pic.twitter.com/xiVd6q5JIm— John Fetterman (@JohnFetterman) July 10, 2022
      Perhaps in desperation, Oz has recently adopted a new tactic: a “John Fetterman basement tracker” that records how long it’s been since the Democrat has held a public event. But instead of coming off as a blow to his opponent, the strategy just seems mean-spirited. What took Fetterman off the campaign trail was a stroke on 13 May.Despite his pause from IRL campaigning, Fetterman’s strategy appears to be working. Polls have repeatedly put the Democrat on top in the race, and he has raised about nine times as much as his opponent since April. A win in November may serve as a political lesson about the importance of carving out a digital identity and could be crucial to Democrats’ chances of holding the Senate. Like so many others these days, Fetterman is working from home – and finding that he can still get things done.TopicsUS politicsPennsylvaniaUS SenateSocial mediaTwitterfeaturesReuse this content More