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      in US Politics

      Chinese bots had key role in debunked ballot video shared by Eric Trump

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      A Chinese bot network played a key role in spreading disinformation during and after the US election, including a debunked video of “ballot burning” shared by Eric Trump, a new study reveals.The misleading video shows a man filming himself on Virginia Beach, allegedly burning votes cast for Donald Trump. The ballots were actually samples. The clip went viral after Trump’s son Eric posted it a day later on his official Twitter page, where it got more than 1.2m views.The video was believed to have originated from an account associated with the QAnon conspiracy theory. But the study by Cardiff University found two China-linked accounts had shared the video before this. Twitter has since suspended one of them.The same Chinese network has spread anti-US propaganda, including calls for violence in the run-up to the 6 January storming of the US Capitol building by a pro-Trump mob. Afterwards. It compared the west’s response to the DC riot to political protests in Hong Kong.The accounts previously posted hostile messages about Trump and Joe Biden, made allegations of election fraud and promoted “negative narratives” about the US response to the coronavirus pandemic.Professor Martin Innes, director of Cardiff University’s crime and security institute, said open-source analysis strongly suggested “multiple links” to Beijing.Researchers initially thought the hidden network was not especially complex, he said. Further evidence, however, revealed what he called a “sophisticated and disciplined” online operation. Accounts did not use certain hashtags in an apparent attempt to avoid Twitter’s counter-measures. They posted during regular Chinese working hours, with gaps on a national holiday, and used machine tools to translate into English.“The network appears designed to run as a series of almost autonomous ‘cells’, with minimal links connecting them,” Innes said. “This structure is designed to protect the network as a whole if one ‘cell’ is discovered, which suggests a degree of planning and forethought.“Therefore, this marks the network as a significant attempt to influence the trajectory of US politics by foreign actors.”Efforts by Russian-linked social media actors to influence US elections are well known. The special counsel Robert Mueller detailed an extensive troll operation run out of building in St Petersburg. Its goal was to “disparage” Hillary Clinton and to promulgate “divisive” content, Mueller found.The Chinese accounts cannot be definitely linked to the state. But ordinary Chinese citizens do not have access to Twitter and it appears that Beijing may be seeking to emulate Kremlin practices by setting up its own US-facing political influence operation.Last year the university’s research team uncovered more than 400 accounts engaging in suspicious activities. These were forwarded to Twitter, which suspended them within a few days. The latest analysis suggests further accounts are still working, with the network more resilient than previously thought.There is compelling evidence of links to China. Posts feature the Chinese language and a focus upon topics reflecting Chinese geopolitical interests. Some 221 accounts spread content in favour of the Chinese Communist party, encompassing some 42,618 tweets, the study found.The accounts also attacked Trump for referring to Covid-19 as the China virus. One claimed the virus originated outside China and had actually come from the US laboratory at Fort Detrick, in Frederick, Maryland. The network’s main goal was “encouragement of discord” in the US, the study concluded. Most tweets about Trump were negative. The handful that were positive urged Americans to “fetch their guns”, to “fight for democracy” and to “call gunmen together” in order to win a second Trump term.The bots complained of “double standards” after the Capitol building riot, saying US politicians had hypocritically backed protesters who entered the Hong Kong legislative building. “The riots in Congress are a disgrace to the United States today, and will soon become the fuse of the American order,” one remarked. More

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      Big tech facilitated QAnon and the Capitol attack. It’s time to hold them accountable

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      Donald Trump’s election lies and the 6 January attack on the US Capitol have highlighted how big tech has led our society down a path of conspiracies and radicalism by ignoring the mounting evidence that their products are dangerous.But the spread of deadly misinformation on a global scale was enabled by the absence of antitrust enforcement by the federal government to rein in out-of-control monopolies such as Facebook and Google. And there is a real risk social media giants could sidestep accountability once again.Trump’s insistence that he won the election was an attack on democracy that culminated in the attack on the US Capitol. The events were as much the fault of Sundar Pichai, Jack Dorsey and Mark Zuckerberg – CEOs of Google, Twitter and Facebook, respectively – as they were the fault of Trump and his cadre of co-conspirators.During the early days of social media, no service operated at the scale of today’s Goliaths. Adoption was limited and online communities lived in small and isolated pockets. When the Egyptian uprisings of 2011 proved the power of these services, the US state department became their cheerleaders, offering them a veneer of exceptionalism which would protect them from scrutiny as they grew exponentially.Later, dictators and anti-democratic actors would study and co-opt these tools for their own purposes. As the megaphones got larger, the voices of bad actors also got louder. As the networks got bigger, the feedback loop amplifying those voices became stronger. It is unimaginable that QAnon could gain a mass following without tech companies’ dangerous indifference.Eventually, these platforms became immune to forces of competition in the marketplace – they became information monopolies with runaway scale. Absent any accountability from watchdogs or the marketplace, fringe conspiracy theories enjoyed unchecked propagation. We can mark networked conspiracies from birtherism to QAnon as straight lines through the same coterie of misinformers who came to power alongside Trump.Today, most global internet activity happens on services owned by either Facebook or Alphabet, which includes YouTube and Google. The internet has calcified into a pair of monopolies who protect their size by optimizing to maximize “engagement”. Sadly, algorithms designed to increase dependency and usage are far more profitable than ones that would encourage timely, local, relevant and, most importantly, accurate information. The truth, in a word, is boring. Facts rarely animate the kind of compulsive engagement rewarded by recommendation and search algorithms.The best tool – if not the only tool – to hold big tech accountable is antitrust enforcement: enforcing the existing antitrust laws designed to rein in companies’ influence over other political, economic and social institutions.Antitrust enforcement has historically been the US government’s greatest weapon against such firms. From breaking up the trusts at the start of the 20th century to the present day, antitrust enforcement spurs competition and ingenuity while re-empowering citizens. Most antitrust historians agree that absent US v Microsoft in 1998, which stopped Microsoft from bundling products and effectively killing off other browsers, the modern internet would have been strangled in the crib.The best tool to hold big tech accountable is antitrust enforcement: enforcing the existing antitrust laws designed to rein in companies’ influence over other political, economic and social institutionsIronically, Google and Facebook were the beneficiaries of such enforcement. Over two decades would pass before US authorities brought antitrust suits against Google and Facebook last year. Until then, antitrust had languished as a tool to counterbalance abusive monopolies. Big tech sees an existential threat in the renewed calls for antitrust, and these companies have aggressively lobbied to ensure key vacancies in the Biden administration are filled by their friends.The Democratic party is especially vulnerable to soft capture by these tech firms. Big tech executives are mostly left-leaning and donate millions to progressive causes while spouting feelgood rhetoric of inclusion and connectivity. During the Obama administration, Google and Facebook were treated as exceptional, avoiding any meaningful regulatory scrutiny. Democratic Senate leadership, specifically Senator Chuck Schumer, has recently signaled he will treat these companies with kid gloves.The Biden administration cannot repeat the Obama legacy of installing big tech-friendly individuals to these critical but often under-the-radar roles. The new administration, in consultation with Schumer, will be tasked with appointing a new assistant attorney general for antitrust at the Department of Justice and up to three members of the Federal Trade Commission. Figures friendly to big tech in those positions could abruptly settle the pending litigation against Google or Facebook.President Joe Biden and Schumer must reject any candidate who has worked in the service of big tech. Any former White House or congressional personnel who gave these companies a pass during the Obama administration should also be disqualified from consideration. Allowing big tech’s lawyers and plants to run the antitrust agencies would be the equivalent of allowing a climate-change-denying big oil executive run the Environmental Protection Agency.The public is beginning to recognize the harms to society wrought by big tech and a vibrant and bipartisan anti-monopoly movement with diverse scholars, and activists has risen over the past few years. Two-thirds of Democratic voters believe, along with a majority of Republicans, that Biden should “refuse to appoint executives, lobbyists, or lawyers for these companies to positions of power or influence in his administration while this legal activity is pending”. This gives the Democratic party an opportunity to do the right thing for our country and attract new voters by fighting for the web we want.Big tech played a central role in the dangerous attack on the US Capitol and all of the events which led to it. Biden’s antitrust appointees will be the ones who decide if there are any consequences to be paid. More

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      Twitter permanently bans My Pillow chief Mike Lindell

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      Twitter has permanently banned My Pillow chief executive Mike Lindell, after he continued to perpetuate the baseless claim that Donald Trump won the 2020 US presidential election.Twitter decided to ban Lindell due to “repeated violations” of its civic integrity policy, a spokesperson said. The policy was implemented last September and is targeted at fighting disinformation.It was not immediately clear which posts by Lindell triggered his suspension.Lindell, a Trump supporter, has continued to insist that the election was rigged even after Joe Biden has begun work in the Oval Office.Major retailers such as Bed Bath & Beyond and Kohl’s have said they will stop carrying My Pillow products, Lindell previously said.Lindell is also facing potential litigation from Dominion Voting Systems for claiming their machines played a role in alleged election fraud. He also urged Trump to declare martial law in an attempt to overturn the election.Following the storming of the US Capitol earlier this month, Twitter has banned more than 70,000 accounts for sharing misinformation.Trump, who urged on the mob, has also had his account permanently suspended. More

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      Twitter will test letting some users fact-check tweets.

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storyTracking Viral MisinformationTwitter will test letting some users fact-check tweets.Jan. 25, 2021, 1:00 p.m. ETJan. 25, 2021, 1:00 p.m. ETFalse claims about the coronavirus and the election remain common on Twitter.Credit…Thomas White/ReutersTwitter said on Monday it would allow some users to fact-check misleading tweets, the latest effort by the company to combat misinformation.Users who join the program, called Birdwatch, can add notes to rebut false or misleading posts and rate the reliability of the fact-checking annotations made by other users. Users in the United States who verify their email addresses and phone numbers with Twitter, and have not violated Twitter’s rules in recent months, can apply to join Birdwatch.Twitter will start Birdwatch as a small pilot program with 1,000 users, and the fact-checking they produce will not be visible on Twitter but will appear on a separate site. If the experiment is successful, Twitter plans to expand the program to more than 100,000 people in the coming months and will make their contributions visible to all users.Twitter continues to grapple with misinformation on the platform. In the months before the U.S. presidential election, Twitter added fact-check labels written by its own employees to tweets from prominent accounts, temporarily disabled its recommendation algorithm, and added more context to trending topics. Still, false claims about the coronavirus and elections have proliferated on Twitter despite the company’s efforts to remove them. But Twitter has also faced backlash from some users who have argued that the company removes too much information.Giving some control over moderation directly to users could help restore trust and allow the company to move more quickly to address false claims, Twitter said.“We apply labels and add context to tweets, but we don’t want to limit efforts to circumstances where something breaks our rules or receives widespread public attention,” Keith Coleman, a vice president of product at Twitter, wrote in a blog post announcing the program. “We also want to broaden the range of voices that are part of tackling this problem, and we believe a community-driven approach can help.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      in Elections

      Bernie Sanders, internet te ama

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Presidential InaugurationHighlightsPhotos From the DayBiden’s SpeechWho Attended?Biden’s Long RoadAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyBernie Sanders, internet te amaEl senador por Vermont en una conferencia de prensa en México, en la nave espacial de “Star Trek”, en un fresco de Leonardo da Vinci. Sanders es, una vez más, la estrella de un meme.El senador por Vermont, Bernie Sanders, viendo cómodamente los actos de investidura el miércoles.Credit…Brendan Smialowski/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesMike Ives y 21 de enero de 2021 a las 12:14 ETRead in EnglishEl senador Bernie Sanders por Vermont es un ferviente defensor de los salarios justos y un excandidato presidencial que perdió la nominación demócrata frente al ahora presidente Joe Biden. Y gracias a sus prácticas elecciones de vestimenta también es ahora el centro de una aparentemente interminable avalancha de fotos alteradas que dominaron algunos rincones de internet en las horas posteriores a la investidura socialmente distanciada de Biden el miércoles.En medio de los trajes oscuros y los abrigos brillantes que salpicaban la escalinata del Capitolio, Sanders fue fotografiado sentado con una mascarilla, con las piernas cruzadas y envuelto en un voluminoso abrigo y guantes contra el gélido clima de Washington, D. C. Poco después, la imagen, tomada por el fotógrafo Brendan Smialowski para Getty Images, comenzó a circular por las redes sociales insertada en una amplia gama de fotografías y escenas de películas y obras de arte.“This could’ve been an email” pic.twitter.com/kn68z6eDhY— Ashley K. (@AshleyKSmalls) January 20, 2021
      En un día en el que todo giraba en torno a Biden, resultaba en cierto modo apropiado que Sanders, cuyo mayor apoyo político en la carrera presidencial procedía de los votantes jóvenes, fuera sin embargo el protagonista del mayor meme del día al no hacer otra cosa que sentarse y cruzar los brazos. En las elecciones primarias, Sanders disfrutó de un número de seguidores en línea significativamente mayor que Biden, especialmente entre aquellos que suelen comunicarse a través de memes.Aunque otros memes protagonizados por Sanders se utilizaron a menudo para decir algo —llevaba lo que parece ser el mismo abrigo en un video de recaudación de fondos de 2019 en el que está “una vez más pidiendo tu apoyo financiero”, una línea que ha sido reutilizada en una larga serie de maneras— no había un significado tan profundo en el meme más reciente. En lugar de utilizar su imagen para exponer una idea, simplemente se le ha colocado en nuevos contextos, con su pose, su atuendo y su expresión como chiste.Aunque el día pertenecía a Biden, el meme sirvió como un divertido espectáculo, un poco de diversión y frivolidad después de cuatro años en los que la política presidencial trajo a los seguidores de Sanders pocas razones para estar de buen humor.No fue el único meme inspirado en el día de la toma de posesión: otros se refirieron al atuendo de la exprimera dama Michelle Obama y a Lady Gaga, quien cantó el himno nacional vestida no muy diferente a un personaje de Los juegos del hambre. Pero incluso con Janet Yellen, la candidata de Biden a secretaria del Tesoro, igual de abrigada que el senador, era Sanders, el presidente entrante de la Comisión de Presupuestos del Senado, quien parecía el favorito.Las primeras publicaciones sobre él comenzaron con simples reseñas de su atuendo práctico y relativamente poco glamuroso. Algunos veían a sus tíos y padres en su elección de poner el estar abrigado por encima del estilo.Luego llegaron los memes, en los que los usuarios de las redes sociales tomaron la imagen original de Sanders y encontraron nuevos escenarios para él y su abrigo. Lo insertaron en la historia. Lo sentó en la bolera con The dude. Disfrutó del sol en una playa estatal cerrada en Nueva Jersey con el exgobernador de ese estado, Chris Christie.Otros llevaron la imagen de Sanders al cine, mostrándolo en el puente de la nave Enterprise en Star Trek y como miembro de los Avengers.El National Bobblehead Hall of Fame sacó provecho al vender su propia versión de la pose. Nick Sawhney, un ingeniero de software de Nueva York, creó una herramienta que permite insertar a Sanders en cualquier dirección de Google Maps street view.Algunos mensajes eran políticos. Otros “posiblemente blasfemos”.El avatar del senador parecía ocupado. Visitó un museo y se sentó en el Trono de Hierro de Juego de tronos. Se dejó caer en un partido de curling y se coló en un cuadro de Leonardo da Vinci.Hizo un cameo en Mario Kart, una conferencia de prensa en México y un viaje a la superficie de la luna. Hizo un recorrido por la ciudad de Nueva York.BuzzFeed News informó de que Sanders obtuvo sus guantes de Jen Ellis, una maestra de segundo grado en Essex Junction, Vermont. Ella dijo que le envió un par después de que él perdió la candidatura presidencial demócrata en 2016.Ellis tuiteó que los guantes estaban hechos de lana reutilizada y forradas con felpa.En una entrevista con la CBS, Sanders se rio de la atención.“En Vermont, nos vestimos, sabemos algo sobre el frío”, le dijo a Gayle King. “Y no nos preocupa tanto la buena moda. Solo queremos mantenernos calientes. Y eso es lo que he hecho hoy”.“Misión cumplida”, dijo King.Yonette Joseph colaboró con reportería.Daniel Victor es un reportero radicado en Londres que cubre una amplia variedad de historias con un enfoque en las últimas noticias. En 2012 dejó ProPublica y se integró al Times. @bydanielvictorAdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Bernie Sanders Is Once Again the Star of a Meme

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Presidential InaugurationHighlightsPhotos From the DayBiden’s SpeechTaking the OathBiden’s Long RoadAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyBernie Sanders Is Once Again the Star of a MemeThe Vermont senator was cold, but comfortable. The internet noticed.Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont comfortably watching the inauguration events on Wednesday.Credit…Brendan Smialowski/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesMike Ives and Jan. 21, 2021Updated 9:38 a.m. ETSenator Bernie Sanders of Vermont is a fierce advocate of fair wages and a former presidential candidate who lost the Democratic nomination to now-President Biden. And thanks to his practical clothing choices he is also now the center of a seemingly endless flood of altered pictures that dominated some corners of the internet in the hours after Mr. Biden’s socially distanced inauguration on Wednesday.Amid the dark suits and bright coats dotting the Capitol steps, Mr. Sanders was photographed sitting masked, cross-legged and bundled up in a bulky coat and mittens against the frigid weather in Washington, D.C. Soon after, the image, taken by the photographer Brendan Smialowski for Getty Images, began to circulate on social media inserted into a wide array of photographs and scenes from movies and artworks.“This could’ve been an email” pic.twitter.com/kn68z6eDhY— Ashley K. (@AshleyKSmalls) January 20, 2021
      On a day all about Mr. Biden, it was in some ways appropriate that Mr. Sanders, whose strongest political support in the presidential race came from young voters, would nonetheless be the star of the day’s biggest meme by doing nothing but sitting and crossing his arms. In their primary competition, Mr. Sanders enjoyed a significantly larger online following than Mr. Biden, especially among those who often communicate through memes.Though other memes starring Mr. Sanders were often used to say something — he wore what appears to be the same coat in a 2019 fund-raising video in which he is “once again asking for your financial support,” a line that has been repurposed in a litany of ways — there was no such deeper meaning to the newest meme. Instead of using his image to make an argument, he was simply placed into new contexts, with his pose, outfit and expression themselves serving as the joke.While the day belonged to Mr. Biden, the meme served as an amusing sideshow, a bit of fun and levity after four years in which presidential politics brought Mr. Sanders’s supporters few reasons to be in a good mood.It wasn’t the only meme inspired by Inauguration Day: Others touched on the former first lady Michelle Obama’s outfit and on Lady Gaga, who sang the national anthem dressed not entirely unlike a character from the “Hunger Games.” But even with Janet Yellen, Mr. Biden’s nominee for Treasury secretary, dressed just as warmly, it was Mr. Sanders, the incoming chair of the Senate Budget Committee, who seemed far the favorite.Early posts about him started with simple reviews of his practical, relatively unglamorous outfit. Some saw their uncles and fathers in his choice to put warmth over style.Then came the memes, in which social media users took the original image of Mr. Sanders and found new locations for him and his coat. He was inserted into history. Sat at the bowling alley with The Dude. Enjoyed the sun at a closed state beach in New Jersey with that state’s former governor, Chris Christie.Still others brought the Sanders image to the movies, showing him on the bridge of the Starship Enterprise in “Star Trek,” and as a member of the Avengers.The National Bobblehead Hall of Fame capitalized by selling its own version of the pose. Nick Sawhney, a software engineer in New York, created a tool that allows you to insert Mr. Sanders into any street address in Google Maps street view.Some posts were political. Others “possibly blasphemous.”The senator’s avatar looked busy. It visited a museum and sat on the Iron Throne from “Game of Thrones.” It dropped in on a curling match and photobombed a Leonardo da Vinci painting.There was a cameo in Mario Kart, a news conference in Mexico and a trip to the surface of the moon. He took a tour of New York City.BuzzFeed News reported that Mr. Sanders got his mittens from Jen Ellis, a second-grade teacher in Essex Junction, Vt., who made gloves on the side. She said she sent him a pair after he lost a bid for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2016.Ms. Ellis tweeted that the mittens were made from repurposed wool and lined with fleece.In an interview with CBS, Mr. Sanders laughed off the attention.“In Vermont, we dress, we know something about the cold,” he told Gayle King. “And we’re not so concerned about good fashion. We just want to keep warm. And that’s what I did today.”“Mission accomplished,” Ms. King said.Yonette Joseph contributed reporting.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      in US Politics

      Twitter suspends Marjorie Taylor Green, QAnon-backing Republican

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      Twitter has temporarily suspended the account of the Georgia congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Green, who has gained a large following on social media, in part by posting incendiary videos and comments.Greene, a Republican businesswoman, is the first candidate who expressed support for the baseless, far-right QAnon conspiracy theory to win a US House seat. Greene in November won the race for Georgia’s 14th congressional district after her Democratic opponent had dropped out.On Sunday, she posted a clip from an interview with a local news outlet in which she condemned Georgia election officials and expressed support for debunked theories claiming that voting machines, absentee ballots and other issues led to widespread fraud in the state during the presidential election.Twitter responded to the tweet, and others, with a message that called the election fraud claim “disputed”, and saying it posed “a risk of violence”.A statement from Greene’s team on Sunday included screenshots from Twitter that appeared to show the company informing the congresswoman she had violated its rules and would be prohibited from interacting with content on the site for 12 hours.Greene said in a statement her account had been suspended “without explanation”.Greene has faced national scrutiny for racist and bigoted statements and posts supporting QAnon, the baseless conspiracy theory rooted in antisemitic tropes whose followers believe Donald Trump is secretly fighting against a cabal of Democrats, billionaires and celebrities engaged in child trafficking.The FBI has identified the movement as a potential domestic terrorism threat, and it has repeatedly inspired vigilante violence.Last week, Greene wore a face mask that said “censored” on it during her remarks on on Trump’s second impeachment. Greene was speaking on the House floor, during a session broadcast on national television.Twitter last week banned Trump from its platform, citing “the risk of further incitement of violence” following the deadly insurrection at the US Capitol on 6 January.As of 12 January, the company had also suspended more than 70,000 accounts associated with QAnon as it attempted to rein in harmful activity ahead of the presidential inauguration.Twitter has said it is taking action against online behaviour “that has the potential to lead to offline harm” after the mob of Trump supporters tried to violently storm the Capitol building.Twitter did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Greene’s suspension. More

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      in US Politics

      The silencing of Trump has highlighted the authoritarian power of tech giants | John Naughton

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      It was eerily quiet on social media last week. That’s because Trump and his cultists had been “deplatformed”. By banning him, Twitter effectively took away the megaphone he’s been masterfully deploying since he ran for president. The shock of the 6 January assault on the Capitol was seismic enough to convince even Mark Zuckerberg that the plug finally had to be pulled. And so it was, even to the point of Amazon Web Services terminating the hosting of Parler, a Twitter alternative for alt-right extremists.The deafening silence that followed these measures was, however, offset by an explosion of commentary about their implications for freedom, democracy and the future of civilisation as we know it. Wading knee-deep through such a torrent of opinion about the first amendment, free speech, censorship, tech power and “accountability” (whatever that might mean), it was sometimes hard to keep one’s bearings. But what came to mind continually was H L Mencken’s astute insight that “for every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple and wrong”. The air was filled with people touting such answers.In the midst of the discursive chaos, though, some general themes could be discerned. The first highlighted cultural differences, especially between the US with its sacred first amendment on the one hand and European and other societies, which have more ambivalent histories of moderating speech. The obvious problem with this line of discussion is that the first amendment is about government regulation of speech and has nothing whatsoever to do with tech companies, which are free to do as they like on their platforms.A second theme viewed the root cause of the problem as the lax regulatory climate in the US over the last three decades, which led to the emergence of a few giant tech companies that effectively became the hosts for much of the public sphere. If there were many Facebooks, YouTubes and Twitters, so the counter-argument runs, then censorship would be less effective and problematic because anyone denied a platform could always go elsewhere.Then there were arguments about power and accountability. In a democracy, those who make decisions about which speech is acceptable and which isn’t ought to be democratically accountable. “The fact that a CEO can pull the plug on Potus’s loudspeaker without any checks and balances,” fumed EU commissioner Thierry Breton, “is not only confirmation of the power of these platforms, but it also displays deep weaknesses in the way our society is organised in the digital space.” Or, to put it another way, who elected the bosses of Facebook, Google, YouTube and Twitter?What was missing from the discourse was any consideration of whether the problem exposed by the sudden deplatforming of Trump and his associates and camp followers is actually soluble – at least in the way it has been framed until now. The paradox that the internet is a global system but law is territorial (and culture-specific) has traditionally been a way of stopping conversations about how to get the technology under democratic control. And it was running through the discussion all week like a length of barbed wire that snagged anyone trying to make progress through the morass.All of which suggests that it’d be worth trying to reframe the problem in more productive ways. One interesting suggestion for how to do that came last week in a thoughtful Twitter thread by Blayne Haggart, a Canadian political scientist. Forget about speech for a moment, he suggests, and think about an analogous problem in another sphere – banking. “Different societies have different tolerances for financial risk,” he writes, “with different regulatory regimes to match. Just like countries are free to set their own banking rules, they should be free to set strong conditions, including ownership rules, on how platforms operate in their territory. Decisions by a company in one country should not be binding on citizens in another country.”In those terms, HSBC may be a “global” bank, but when it’s operating in the UK it has to obey British regulations. Similarly, when operating in the US, it follows that jurisdiction’s rules. Translating that to the tech sphere, it suggests that the time has come to stop accepting the tech giant’s claims to be hyper-global corporations, whereas in fact they are US companies operating in many jurisdictions across the globe, paying as little local tax as possible and resisting local regulation with all the lobbying resources they can muster. Facebook, YouTube, Google and Twitter can bleat as sanctimoniously as they like about freedom of speech and the first amendment in the US, but when they operate here, as Facebook UK, say, then they’re merely British subsidiaries of an American corporation incorporated in California. And these subsidiaries obey British laws on defamation, hate speech and other statutes that have nothing to do with the first amendment. Oh, and they pay taxes on their local revenues.What I’ve been reading Capitol ideasWhat Happened? is a blog post by the Duke sociologist Kieran Healy, which is the most insightful attempt I’ve come across to explain the 6 January attack on Washington’s Capitol building.Tweet and sourHow @realDonaldTrump Changed Politics — and America. Derek Robertson in Politico on how Trump “governed” 140 characters at a time.Stay safeThe Plague Year is a terrific New Yorker essay by Lawrence Wright that includes some very good reasons not to be blase about Covid. More