Elon Musk’s ‘Twitter Files’ Farce Fails Pitifully in Portraying Poor Trump as a Put Upon Victim

Posted by Mark NC on December 13, 2022 at 10:40 am. 2 Comments :

From its outset, Elon Musk’s “Twitter Files” Soap Opera purported to expose the social media platform’s content moderation staff as biased against Donald Trump. However, after four episodes it utterly failed to achieve its own blatantly biased objective. Now the fifth and latest installment flops in a similarly humiliating manner.

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Episode five was a 46 tweet spray by conservative author Bari Weiss that sought to disparage the decision makers at Twitter. She accused them of being predisposed to banning Trump merely due to “the risk of further incitement of violence” that he represented following his January 6th insurrection. However, the messages that were cited actually show a team that was conscientious of the complexity of the situation and committed to fully and fairly deliberating the choices available to them.

As has been the established practice by the previous installments, Weiss posted a slew of screenshots of private internal communications that failed to advance her premise. Then she closed with a rather muddled observation that only illustrates how poorly she understands the concepts of free speech and public discourse.

Musk introduced episode five saying that “Under pressure from hundreds of activist employees, Twitter deplatforms Trump, a sitting US President, even though they themselves acknowledge that he didn’t violate the rules.” That admission, aside from disparaging the free speech of hundreds of Twitter employees, is an inadvertent validation of Twitter’s team because it shows that they had not prejudged Trump. Weiss elaborated on that in several of her tweet quotes. For instance, these three tweets contradict the whole premise that Twitter insiders were bent on banning Trump from the start…

4. For years, Twitter had resisted calls both internal and external to ban Trump on the grounds that blocking a world leader from the platform or removing their controversial tweets would hide important information that people should be able to see and debate.

7. There were dissenters inside Twitter.

12. But the Twitter staff assigned to evaluate tweets quickly concluded that Trump had *not* violated Twitter’s policies.“I think we’d have a hard time saying this is incitement,” wrote one staffer.

That is not the discourse of a biased cabal of Trump haters intent on banishing the coup-plotting, sore loser. To the contrary, it’s evidence of a diversity of opinion and a commitment to an open dialogue. And most of the rest of Weiss’ tweet storm was more of the same. However, when she got near the end she summed up her harangue with a couple of tweets that show how little sense she makes…

43. Ultimately, the concerns about Twitter’s efforts to censor news about Hunter Biden’s laptop, blacklist disfavored views, and ban a president aren’t about the past choices of executives in a social media company.

44. They’re about the power of a handful of people at a private company to influence the public discourse and democracy.

So Wiess is lamenting the wholly contrived “concerns” that Twitter censored and blacklisted news, and was intent on banning Trump. Then she claims that those concerns “aren’t about the past choices of executives in a social media company,” but they are about “the power of a handful of people at a private company.” How exactly are those two things different? It’s like saying that the sky isn’t blue, it’s actually blue.

What’s more, Weiss appears to be oblivious to the fact that lots of private companies “influence the public discourse and democracy.” The media, for instance, and virtually every major corporation that has vested interests in how their industries are regulated. Does she think that oil or banking or pharmaceutical companies (to name just a few) don’t try to exert such influence?

In fact, Twitter itself is trying to exert such influence by releasing these messages that were sent by people who had an expectation of privacy when they were communicating amongst themselves. In at least one case a Twitter employee was driven from his home due to threats as a result of Musk’s inappropriate exposure of these people’s identities.

In addition to his callous recklessness, Musk is being flagrantly hypocritical by pretending that he’s interested in free speech or transparency. The inescapable fact is that he’s releasing this limited batch of pre-selected messages through his hand-picked, right-wing biased puppets. Meanwhile, he’s refusing to make all of the messages available to the news media and the public so that everyone can see everything that was discussed and all of the relevant context.

In other words, Musk is limiting what the public can know, and he is delegating his power to “a handful of people at a private company to influence the public discourse and democracy.” Go figure.

What’s worse is that increasingly those people are repugnant cretins who promote racism, anti-Semitism, and neo-fascism, such as most of those whose Twitter accounts Musk has restored, including Marjorie Taylor Greene, Kanye West, Project Veritas, Roger Stone, neo-Nazi Andrew Anglin, and especially Donald Trump.

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Fox News Lies: Falsely Accuses Michele Obama of ‘Pressuring’ Twitter to Ban Trump

Posted by Mark NC on December 11, 2022 at 12:28 pm. 1 Comments :

When Fox News gets their teeth into what they perceive to be scandal bait for their already brainwashed audience, they hold tight for absurdly long periods of time exceeding anything that could be considered rational. Whether it’s Benghazi, Hunter Biden, or Hillary Clinton’s emails, they clench down as if they’re afraid of it squirming free and escaping to reality.

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Among their most fevered fixations is anything having to do with President Obama or his wife Michelle. So on Sunday Fox News put out a story that reached back in time to malign the former First Lady for something she wrote nearly two years ago.

The story was an attempt to associate Ms. Obama with the pathetically shallow “Twitter Files” nothingburger that Elon Musk has been hyping as an “exposé” of the alleged liberal bias of Twitter’s prior management. Not surprisingly, they not only proved none of their baseless allegations, they actually revealed how responsibly Twitter’s Trust and Safety team acted to protect their platform – and the nation – from the deliberate incitements to violence of Donald Trump and his “Big Lie” confederates.

SEE THIS: The Sham ‘Twitter Files’ Exposé Actually Proves that Trump’s Coup Plot was Appropriately Muted

Fox’s story featured the sensationalist tabloid headline, “Twitter Files reveal Trump ban came after Michelle Obama, others pressured the company.” Needless to say, the files didn’t reveal any such thing. They merely made reference to a statement that Ms. Obama released the day after Trump’s insurrection on January 6, 2021. Fox’s story began saying that…

“Former President Donald Trump was banned from Twitter the day after former first lady Michelle Obama and others demanded the company ‘permanently’ remove him, according to the newest ‘Twitter Files’ installment.”

In reality, Ms. Obama never “demanded” anything of Twitter. She simply expressed her opinion about what should be done to prevent another atrocity like the one that occurred the day before. Here are some excerpts from her heartfelt and moving statement with the fragment that Fox News quoted in bold [the full statement is here]…

“The day was a fulfillment of the wishes of an infantile and unpatriotic president who can’t handle the truth of his own failures. And the wreckage lays at the feet of a party and media apparatus that gleefully cheered him on, knowing full well the possibility of consequences like these.” […]

“I cannot think about moving on or turning the page until we reckon with the reality of what we saw yesterday. True progress will be possible only once we acknowledge that this disconnect exists and take steps to repair it. And that also means coming to grips with the reality that millions voted for a man so obviously willing to burn our democracy down for his own ego.” […]

“I hurt for our country. And I wish I had all the solutions to make things better. I wish I had the confidence that people who know better will act like it for more than a news cycle or two. All I know is that now is a time for true patriotism. Now is the time for those who voted for this president [Trump] to see the reality of what they’ve supported — and publicly and forcefully rebuke him and the actions of that mob. Now is the time for Silicon Valley companies to stop enabling this monstrous behavior — and go even further than they have already by permanently banning this man from their platforms and putting in place policies to prevent their technologies from being used by the nation’s leaders to fuel insurrection. And if we have any hope of improving this nation, now is the time for swift and serious consequences for the failure of leadership that led to yesterday’s shame.“

Ms. Obama’s remarks were addressed to a nation that was in shock after having watched anti-democratic thugs desecrating the seat of our democracy, assaulting brave, outnumbered law enforcement officers, and threatening the lives of our representatives. She was speaking for millions of Americans who never thought they would witness such a despicable mob of traitors acting out their hostile treachery at the behest of a sociopathic, wannabe dictator, who couldn’t accept the fact that he’s a loser – which he still is, and still can’t.

What Ms. Obama was not doing was “pressuring” Twitter. She was exercising her First Amendment rights to express an opinion about what ought to be done in response to the horror we all saw on our television screens. Fox News offered no evidence whatsoever that she ever even spoke to anyone at Twitter. To the contrary, it was Trump and his cohorts who directly threatened Twitter in response to his well warranted suspension. And regarding the rioters at the Capitol, he is even now promising to pardon them for their heinous crimes if he were to return to the White House.

That shouldn’t surprise anyone who has been paying attention. After all, Trump recently called for the “termination” for the Constitution in order to have himself installed as America’s first authoritarian tyrant.

SEE THIS: Trump Doubles Down on His Constitution Bashing and Misquotes Himself to Gaslight His Cult

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The Sham ‘Twitter Files’ Exposé Actually Proves that Trump’s Coup Plot was Appropriately Muted

Posted by Mark NC on December 10, 2022 at 12:24 pm. 22 Comments :

The new regime at Twitter has been engaging in what it calls an “exposé” of alleged censorship of conservatives in general – and Donald Trump in particular – on the part of Twitter’s prior management team. However, their efforts thus far have been pitifully underwhelming and have failed to prove any of their outrageous and unfounded allegations.

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When Elon Musk took control over Twitter he portrayed himself as a “free speech absolutist” who aspired to bring a dialogue to the service that was unfettered by bias and censorship. In reality, Musk just inserted his own personal biases and revealed that he has no grasp of what free speech really means. He also demonstrated that his absolutist approach only permits unfettered hate speech. Consequently, despite his instance that Twitter would not become a “free-for-all hellscape,” that’s precisely what it became shortly after he took the reins.

Last week Musk put out the first of what he promised would be a series of revelations exposing the bias of Twitter. That first release was pathetically devoid of any of the bombshells they teased. Although it succeeded in doxing private citizens and putting them at risk for harm.

Now the latest release of Musk’s multipart melodrama was posted Friday night. It consisted of 67 tweets by his protégé/puppet, Matt Taibbi, that ostensibly unveiled a vast conspiracy against conservative tweeters. Suffice to say that it was another nothingburger that failed utterly to prove its predetermined point.

To the contrary, Taibbi actually proved that the staff at Twitter acted responsibly to prevent Trump from inciting further violence during the January 6th insurrection in Washington, D.C. For example, the seventh tweet explicitly laid out how carefully considered any decisions were to tag or suspend potentially violating tweets and users…

7. Twitter executives removed Trump in part over what one executive called the “context surrounding”: actions by Trump and supporters “over the course of the election and frankly last 4+ years.” In the end, they looked at a broad picture. But that approach can cut both ways.

This tweet included a screenshot of the remarks by Twitter moderation staff…

“[H]ere is our quick take: the decision on whether to pull that particular tweet or use that as the last straw for trump depends on many factors including: (1) The overall context and narrative in which that tweet lives – we currently analyze tweets and consider them on a tweet-by-tweet basis which does not appropriately take into account the surrounding context – you can use the telling fire into a crowded theater example – context matters and the narrative that trump and his friends have pursued over the course of this election and frankly the last 4+ years must be taken into account.”

How Taibbi can regard this as evidence of bias is puzzling. It shows a respect for analyzing tweets that takes into consideration the context and the tweeter’s prior comments in order to fully understand their intent. It’s exactly how content moderation should be done. But Taibbi exhibits his bias in the tweets that followed…

8. The bulk of the internal debate leading to Trump’s ban took place in those three January days [6-8]. However, the intellectual framework was laid in the months preceding the Capitol riots.

9. Before J6, Twitter was a unique mix of automated, rules-based enforcement, and more subjective moderation by senior executives. As @BariWeiss reported, the firm had a vast array of tools for manipulating visibility, most all of which were thrown at Trump (and others) pre-J6.

10. As the election approached, senior executives – perhaps under pressure from federal agencies, with whom they met more as time progressed – increasingly struggled with rules, and began to speak of “vios” as pretexts to do what they’d likely have done anyway.

Taibbi is making a wholly manufactured assessment about what he calls the preceding “intellectual framework,” whatever that means. Then he complains that Twitter responsibly employed “rules-based enforcement,” that he baselessly calls subjective, and he whines that their moderation tools were “thrown at Trump.” Maybe that’s because Trump had violated Twitter’s rule innumerable times in the weeks and months that preceded January 6th.

However, the worst part of this screed was Taibbi’s claim that when senior executives “began to speak of ‘vios'” [violations] it was “perhaps under pressure from federal agencies.” Really? He could have just as credibly have said that it was “perhaps under pressure from Martians.” He provided zero evidence of anything resembling pressure by federal agencies or any other entity, terrestrial or otherwise.

That is representative how carelessly and dishonestly Taibbi put together this sham. His only purpose was to create a store of material that Republicans and Trump cultists could link to in order to advance their crackpot conspiracy theories and yammer about conservatives being victims of evil “Big Tech” liberals. The truth is that Twitter long ago admitted that their algorithms favored right-wingers. And near the end of the 67 tweet harangue was one that expressly outlined the situation with regard to Trump’s hostile incitements…

“An update on actions we’re taking as a result of what’s happening in DC today. We have removed (bounced) 3 tweets from @realDonaldTrump on 6 January 2020 [sic] for making unfounded claims of voter fraud and election theft, which must be viewed in the context of the violence in Washington DC today and reasonably can be expected to continue to incite and inspire violent acts around the country. We are requiring a 12-hour timeout following the removal of these tweets. We also have tweeted so there’s transparency in our actions and making it clear that future violations of the Twitter Rules will result in permanent suspension.”

That message completely negates virtually everything that Taibbi had falsely framed prior to it. But he still maintains that his work proves there was a bias at Twitter against Trump and other conservatives. If there was, it was a bias against allowing a treasonous, twice impeached, wannabe dictator from staging a violent coup. And Musk’s rush to reinstate Trump’s account further affirms that he couldn’t care less about the welfare of this nation or its people.

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Trump Literally Calls for Termination of the Constitution and FREAKS OUT Over Bogus Fox News Story

Posted by Mark NC on December 3, 2022 at 11:59 am. 20 Comments :

The unsettling totalitarian tendencies of Donald Trump have long posed an imminent threat to American democracy and freedom. From the outset of his political pursuits he has demonstrated a sinister aspiration to tyrannical rule. It’s a symptom of his malignant narcissism that puts the nation – and world – at risk.

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Now, more than two years after he was unceremoniously evicted from his occupation of the White House by the American people, Trump continues to peddle his “Big Lie” that the election was “rigged” and “stolen” from him. And although it’s a flagrantly false figment of his diseased imagination, he persists in pushing it out to his glassy-eyed cult disciples, despite his rapidly declining approval and influence.

However, if you thought that he had exhausted his store of preposterous allegations and infantile rage, you don’t know Trump. On Saturday morning he unleashed an avalanche of absurdity in service of his severely acute psychosis. This temper tantrum manifested in multiple posts on his floundering Twitter ripoff, Truth Social. The tedious tirade culminated in the following hysteria…

“So, with the revelation of MASSIVE & WIDESPREAD FRAUD & DECEPTION in working closely with Big Tech Companies, the DNC, & the Democrat Party, do you throw the Presidential Election Results of 2020 OUT and declare the RIGHTFUL WINNER, or do you have a NEW ELECTION? A Massive Fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution. Our great ‘Founders’ did not want, and would not condone, False & Fraudulent Elections!”

REALLY? So Trump is now insisting that the Constitution be terminated in order to satisfy his election fraud fantasies and his voracious lust for power. It’s not especially surprising that Trump would hold that view. But it is unusual for him to so forthrightly express it.

The story that Trump regards as a “revelation,” and is so frantically flustered by, came from Fox News. It concerned a couple of Republican attorneys general from Missouri and Louisiana who are suing the Biden administration alleging censorship and suppression of speech by “Big Tech” and the FBI. Their complaint is wholly based on reports that the FBI held regular and normal meetings with the media to alert them to Russia’s attempts to interfere with the 2020 election. But even Fox’s reporting doesn’t assert what Trump and the GOP AGs are twisting these facts to conclude…

“During the deposition, [FBI Supervisory Special Agent Elvis] Chan said that he, along with the FBI’s Foreign Influence Task Force and senior Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency officials, had weekly meetings with major social media companies to warn against Russian disinformation attempts ahead of the 2020 election, according to a source in the Missouri attorney general’s office. […] According to a source, Chan testified that in those multiple, separate meetings, the FBI warned the social media companies that there could be potentially Russian ‘hack and dump’ or ‘hack and leak’ operations.”

So even according to Fox News there was no conspiracy between the government and “Big Tech” to censor or suppress free speech. It was all just an effort to keep the social media outlets apprised of the Russian disinformation campaign. Also, it’s interesting that Trump is readily accepting this reporting based on allegations by an unnamed source when he has previously dismissed them all as fake.

What Trump, and most of the right-wing echo chamber, is distorting into another pseudo-scandal is an already debunked story. It featured false claims that Facebook CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, told podcaster Joe Rogan that the FBI had ordered him to suppress news about – what else – Hunter Biden’s stolen laptop. Which is not what Zuckerberg said, or what the FBI was doing at all.

In reality, the FBI was doing their job to protect social media platforms, and thus the nation, from Russia’s election interference and fake news manipulation. Which is precisely what Russia was, in fact, doing. But that didn’t stop Trump from demanding that 2020 election be declared invalid, and that he be “declared the rightful winner.”

The Fox News story also reported that “the FBI regularly sends social media companies lists of internet URLs and social media accounts” that distribute “disinformation” from “malign foreign influence operations.” The story falsely implies that this amounts to censorship. Except that the evidence shows that the FBI never imposed any actions to be taken on the social media sites. They merely supplied the sites with information and let them determine for themselves what to do with it. In other words, free speech and the free markets prevailed. Not that Fox News or Trump would recognize it.

Ignoring the obvious facts in this affair, Trump ranted furiously in half a dozen successively incoherent posts that it represented “total corruption” and demanded that someone should “DO SOMETHING as our Country Melts!!!” He didn’t say who, or under what authority, this alleged melting should be halted. It was just more of his now familiar impotent whining and pathetic victimhood. And if the past is any indication, we should expect it to continue – and escalate – as he sinks farther into despair and desperation.

UPDATE I: Trump followed up his alt-tweet storm with another post saying that “UNPRECEDENTED FRAUD REQUIRES UNPRECEDENTED CURE!” He doesn’t specify what that “cure” is, but considering that a short while ago he called for terminating the Constitution, it’s hard not surmise that he’s now calling for another coup attempt or other violent upheaval on the part of his treasonous cult.

UPDATE II: Two days later Trump denied ever calling for the termination of the Constitution, despite his words calling for exactly that, verbatim.

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WTFox? Fox News Hack Asks Press Secretary if the White House is Going to Shut Down Twitter

Posted by Mark NC on December 1, 2022 at 11:27 am. 2 Comments :

The melodrama engulfing Twitter since it was devoured by the American oligarch, Elon Musk, is spinning ever more ludicrous plots. And in keeping with the themes dictated by Donald Trump, they generally involve some wealthy wingnut’s paranoid delusions of persecution and victimhood. Poor little billionaires.

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Whenever there is some feigned offense as perceived by the uber-elites, the Fox News propaganda machine can be relied upon to pursue its mission of spreading disinformation on behalf of Trump’s Republican Cult Party. Central to that undertaking is the Fox News White House correspondent, Peter Doocy, whose role has always been to manufacture preposterous narratives for his network’s news mangling.

On Wednesday Doocy assumed his position in the White House press room to fulfill his assignment for the day. He quickly excreted another contrived and bizarre scenario that wasted everyone’s time and forced the Press Secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, to school him on some basic principles of communication and free speech.

Doocy: When are you guys gonna delete the White House Twitter account?
Jean-Pierre: Why would we do that?
Doocy: Well, you say that you’re keeping an eye on Twitter because it might not be a suitable platform. So why use it?

It’s difficult to comprehend just how inept and unqualified Doocy is for the job he’s allegedly doing. Unless, that is, you accept that his job is to babble incoherently in pursuit of what he thinks is a “gotcha” question. Obviously the White House can post comments on Twitter that convey their positions without embracing everything about the site that is troublesome. But Doocy needed the remedial explanation…

Jean-Pierre: I want to be very clear here. The President has always said, and he has been very clear in his belief that it is important for social media platforms to continue to take steps to reduce hate speech and misinformation. And he will continue to say that. But media platforms make independent choices about the information that they present. So I don’t have anything to share on any policy or any changes that we will be making. We have multiple platforms, as you know, that we utilize to communicate with the American people.
Doocy: You say that you’re gonna be monitoring the speech on there. If you see something that you don’t like, would you try to shut Twitter down?
Jean-Pierre: When you talk about monitoring, I hate to break it to you Peter, just like everybody else, we very much monitor the news. We pay close attention to everything that you all are reporting. And Twitter is in the news a lot. And that’s what we’re paying attention to. We’re paying attention to what is in the news and what is being reported on the misinformation that’s out there.

Fox News’ Peter Doocy: “When are you guys gonna delete the White House Twitter account?"

White House Press Sec. Karine Jean-Pierre: “Why would we do that?" pic.twitter.com/6mWbw8FkDH

— The Recount (@therecount) November 30, 2022

Doocy’s laughably illogical leap to the conclusion that the White House would consider “shutting Twitter down” is representative of the mindset of Fox News and the radical right. It’s what they would do. All Jean-Pierre was saying is that misinformation and hate speech are tangible threats to the welfare of the public, and that Twitter and other social media outlets have an obligation to conduct reasonable moderation. But Doocy failed to grasp Jean-Pierre’s clearly articulated point that it is the company’s obligation, not the government.

For the record, the only presidential administration that ever actually threatened to shut down Twitter was that of the former reality TV game show host, Donald Trump.

It is also notable that Trump filed a truly idiotic First Amendment lawsuit against Twitter (which was quickly dismissed), and beseeched his glassy-eyed cult followers to quit Twitter, which he asserted should be outlawed. For more on those execrable exploits, see the following…

Funny, neither Doocy nor Fox News ever had any problem with any of that. They are obviously pro-totalitarian dictatorship when the dictator is Trump of any other Republican.

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Truth Social Traffic Flames Out Just as Trump is Trying to Fire Up His Next Losing Campaign

Posted by Mark NC on November 30, 2022 at 12:26 pm. 15 Comments :

Two weeks ago Donald Trump announced that he is running for the 2024 Republican nomination for president again. Presumably to score a record three popular vote losses. In an extraordinarily gloomy speech packed with horror stories of the “blood-soaked streets” and “cesspool cities” of America, Trump inspired his cult followers by declaring that he has “no doubt that it’s going to get worse.”

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Since Trump’s announcement, he has embellished his credentials in ways that can only make sense to a severely twisted mind. First of all, he chose to have dinner with the notorious white supremacist and anti-Semite, Nick Fuentes, at his Mar-a-Lago resort/home. And if that weren’t bad enough, he also publicly confessed to the theft of classified documents, and lying about it to the FBI.

This inauspicious start to Trump’s campaign might have been mitigated by his having his own Internet platform to promote himself and his candidacy. Unfortunately for him, that was not to be. Trump’s floundering Twitter ripoff, Truth Social, received another blow this week with the news that it has suffered a precipitous decline over the past couple of months. According to reports…

“Truth Social, the alternative social media platform founded by former President Donald Trump, has seen a consecutive two-month decline in unique visitors, according to a watchdog site that monitors conservative media.”

“TheRighting, which reports on and analyzes trends in the conservative media, found that the number of unique visitors to Truth Social dropped from 4.02 million in August — an all-time high — to 3.38 million in September, and then to 2.85 million in October.”

That’s a nearly 30% decline in only two months. And it comes at the time that Trump needs it the most. While Elon Musk has reinstated Trump’s suspended account on Twitter, Trump insists that he will not be going back to the site. If that’s true (doubtful), he would be forsaking his 80 million Twitter followers for the four million glassy-eyed disciples he has on Truth Social. That’s a pretty bad trade off, and one that hurts both Trump and Musk.

From the day Truth Social was launched it was mired in the sort of mayhem that can only be produced by incompetence. It repeatedly crashed. Users couldn’t log in. Fake accounts were rampant. It’s being criminally investigated by the SEC and a Grand Jury in New York. And financially, the shell company it partnered with suffered a 75% decline in stock value over the past eight months. Its investors are backing out.

So while Musk is doing his darnedest to destroy Twitter, his competition at Truth Social for the white nationalist and disinformation demographic is simultaneously sinking into an abyss of failure. Which is typical for a Trump business, just as it is for Trump’s political endeavors. The horrendous record for the candidates that he endorsed during the midterm election is evidence of his waning influence. And post-midterm polls show that the American people don’t even want him to run again.

Truth Social’s woes are nothing new. The site has been a sink hole from day one. Here are a few of the pot holes it has encountered on the way to its demise…

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Why Elon Musk Restoring Trump’s Twitter Account is Ignorant, Dangerous, and Hypocritical

Posted by Mark NC on November 20, 2022 at 9:37 am. 9 Comments :

Nearly two years ago Twitter suspended Donald Trump’s account due to his reckless and relentless lies about election fraud. Twitter imposed the ban on January 8th, two days after Trump’s deadly insurrection on Capitol Hill, saying that “we have permanently suspended the account due to the risk of further incitement of violence.” Now Elon Musk has personally intervened to restore the account.

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Musk has contradicted his prior promise not to restore Trump, or anyone else, until after his “content moderation council” (whatever that is) met. But this reversal is wrong for many reason: 1) It’s pitifully ignorant. 2) It’s predictably dangerous. And 3) It’s flagrantly hypocritical. Let’s drill down into each of these reasons…

IGNORANT:
Musk tweeted that Trump’s account would be restored because “The people have spoken.” He was referring to a poll that he previously posted asking whether the account should be reinstated. The results were pretty close, with “Yes” besting “No” 51.8% to 48.2%. However, it is extraordinarily idiotic to take such a poll seriously. For one thing, Musk knows that the votes could be rampant with bots.

In addition to that, it isn’t a scientifically valid survey with a representative sampling of either Americans or Twitter users. It is merely the opinion of people who happened to come across Musk’s tweet and chose to click on a response. And with only 15 million votes, it isn’t even a representative sample of Musk’s 117 million followers. If Barack Obama (who has 5 times the followers of Musk) posted the same poll, you would have a completely different outcome. So for Musk to revive Trump’s account on the basis of this poll proves that he doesn’t have even the most basic grasp of what it means in reality when “the people have spoken.”

DANGEROUS:
When Twitter suspended Trump’s account, they did so in recognition of the imminent threat that his tweets posed to the country and the American people. He was openly and repeatedly inciting violence and encouraging the hostile tendencies of his cult followers. His toxic rhetoric contributed to the anti-American riots on Capitol Hill on January 6th that resulted in more than 140 law enforcement officers being injured.

Trump’s advocacy of such violence continued on other platforms after he was booted from Twitter. Apparently Musk believes that fomenting violence is acceptable free speech and protected by the Constitution. It isn’t. And given Trump’s predilection for sedition and bigotry, Musk clearly doesn’t care who gets hurt.

HYPOCRITICAL:
Musk pretends that his intention is to bring free speech back to the masses by relaxing the moderation policies of Twitter. However, it’s notable that the only accounts Musk has seen fit to restore are those of well known politicians, celebrities, and others in the elite class. He is demonstrating that his true intent is to pander to wealthy right-wingers, like himself. So while he reinstates only privileged conservatives like Trump (and Kanye West, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Babylon Bee, Jordan Peterson, Andrew Tate, and James O’Keefe’s Project Veritas), the accounts of all the non-aristocrats remain shuttered. That’s hardly a restoration of free speech for the masses.

[Full Disclosure: News Corpse is one of the banned commoners. And another appeal to be reinstated was denied just prior to this article being published]

Adding more soap to this opera, is the fact that Trump has stated repeatedly that he would not return to Twitter even if his account were restored. Earlier this year Trump told Fox News that “I am not going on Twitter, I am going to stay on TRUTH.” That’s his shorthand for his own floundering Twitter ripoff, Truth Social. He reiterated his rejection of Twitter as recently as yesterday in post wherein he linked to Musk’s poll and said “don’t worry, we aren’t going anywhere. Truth Social is special!”

Trump’s animosity toward Twitter is complex and extends way beyond his stated reluctance to rejoin the platform. That’s partly because he has an obligation to promote Truth Social. Although it’s hard to imagine that Trump wouldn’t jump back into the Twitterverse where he had 80 million followers. He has only about four million on Truth Social. His ego would compel him to reconcile, despite having previously raged that “Twitter is a disgrace to democracy. They shouldn’t be allowed to do business in this Country.” And he has sued Twitter, albeit without any legal basis or coherent allegation to support his case. Which is why it was so quickly thrown out of court.

SEE ALSO:

This is the guy that Musk is going out of his way to suck up to. Perhaps it’s because Musk is so badly managing Twitter that he is desperate for the (intensely negative) attention that Trump would produce. Since his acquisition of Twitter a couple of weeks ago, Musk has fired half its staff. Hundreds more have resigned. Advertisers are fleeing in droves. Hate speech has skyrocketed. And the operation is struggling just keep from falling of its own weight.

Meanwhile, Musk has been posting some bizarre and offensive tweets, including one that promoted a callous conspiracy theory about the attack on Nancy Pelosi’s husband. So, good work, Elon. You’re doing a great job of proving how superior you upper-crusters are to the rest of us.

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Trump Compares Himself to Galileo in Crazy Court Filing Contesting His Twitter Ban

Posted by Mark NC on November 15, 2022 at 4:11 pm. 4 Comments :

The madness of Donald Trump has often manifested itself with delusions of grandeur wherein he regards himself as an aspiring dictator, a revered cult leader, or a deified messiah. His self-exaltation has been a hallmark of his psychosis for the many decades he has been in public life.

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Now Trump’s malignant narcissism has been formalized in legal terms. The self-described “stable genius” had his attorneys analogize him to one of history’s greatest intellects, Galileo Galilei, who is known for, among many other discoveries, documenting that the Earth revolves around the Sun, rather than the other way around. At the time that was considered heresy by the Catholic Church, and due to commitment to his scientific principle, Galileo spent his last years in prison.

So what could this possibly have to do with Donald Trump? Well, he recently sued Twitter for having suspended his account. Twitter imposed the ban two days after the deadly insurrection on Capitol Hill that Trump incited, saying that “we have permanently suspended the account due to the risk of further incitement of violence.” Trump’s lawsuit was dismissed in May, but he continues to pursue the matter in an increasingly absurd manner.

The latest filing by Team Trump accuses Twitter of conspiring with the U.S. government to violate his First Amendment rights by prohibiting his efforts to spread misinformation about the 2020 election. The filing is typically comprised of conspiratorial fictions and political grievances that have no basis in the law.

Trump’s argument centers on what he believes is his right to disseminate dangerous lies because, in his mind, they are true, and that in time he will be vindicated. Never mind the harm done as a result of his lying, or the right of private companies to moderate their content. As reported by Politico, the filing states that…

“’Most people once believed these to be crackpot ideas; many still do. But crackpot ideas sometimes turn out to be true. The earth does revolve around the sun, and it was Hunter Biden, not Russian disinformation agents, who dropped off a laptop full of incriminating evidence at a repair shop in Delaware,’ Trump’s lawyers wrote. ‘Galileo spent his remaining days under house arrest for spreading heretical ideas, and thousands of dissidents today are arrested or killed by despotic governments eager to suppress ideas they disapprove of. But this is not the American way.’”

We should be probably be grateful that Trump’s lawyers accept the facts regarding the orbits of planets in our solar system, and that the Earth is round. But they are also promulgating blatant disinformation about President Biden’s son, Hunter. No one has ever asserted that Russia agents “dropped off” Biden’s laptop. Only that Russia exploited the matter by distributing salacious falsehoods in order to help Trump win reelection in 2020.

What’s more, it is utterly preposterous to equate the persecution of Galileo, or that of dissidents in tyrannical regimes, with Trump being unable to post his ludicrous comments on a social media website from the comfort of his Mar-a-Lago resort. And if Trump is ever subject to imprisonment, as Galileo was, it will be because he was found guilty by a jury of his peers of violating laws such as his interference with an election, his incitement to riot, and his theft and hoarding highly sensitive national security materials at his Palm Beach hotel/home. For starters.

With this latest filing, Trump’s attorneys prove, once, again, that they are utterly incompetent and ignorant of the law. But they are the best that Trump can recruit given his reputation for ignoring sound legal advice, and for failing to pay his lawyer’s fees. So expect this filing to have the same result as most of those that have preceded it. The Judge, and everyone in the courtroom. will stifle laughter as it gets thrown out. And all over a matter that Trump doesn’t even want to resolve…

SEE THIS: Trump Declares that ‘I Am Not Going Back On Twitter’ After the Elon Musk Takeover

NOTE: Twitter suspended the News Corpse account after 11 years without giving a reason. So if anyone wants to tweet articles from my website, please feel free to do so often and repeatedly.

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Twitter Tyrant Elon Musk Comes Out Against Free Markets and Free Speech

Posted by Mark NC on November 4, 2022 at 11:34 am. 5 Comments :

It really is a sad commentary on the state of the American economy when the world’s richest man is found whining about losing money due to his own incompetence, ignorance, ego, and greed. Yet that’s where we are now as Elon Musk discovers that the rest of the world isn’t as enamored of his “brilliance” as he is.

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On Friday morning the new “Chief Twit” (as he calls himself) posted a tweet expressing his dismay at the loss of revenue at Twitter following his acquisition. And naturally, he blames it on unidentified “activists” who, in his festering paranoia, he is convinced are out to destroy him. Sounds a lot like his buddy, Donald Trump.

Many people assume that because Musk managed to accumulate an obscenely immense fortune, that he must be an exceptional businessman, rather than just lucky and/or skilled at exploitation. But Musk’s tweet revealed just how poorly he understands both business and the Constitution. He tweeted that…

“Twitter has had a massive drop in revenue, due to activist groups pressuring advertisers, even though nothing has changed with content moderation and we did everything we could to appease the activists. Extremely messed up! They’re trying to destroy free speech in America.”

Let’s breakdown Musk’s meltdown. First of all, the “massive drop in revenue” is a pittance to a multibillionaire who way overpaid for the company he so badly wanted to control. But Musk is, nevertheless, howling at a loss of revenue that could have been easily predicted. He was, in fact, warned that his intention to impose his concept of “free speech absolutism” would result in an advertiser exodus. No advertiser wants their ads to be displayed in proximity to blatant hate speech and flagrant disinformation.

Despite the predictable results of his own foolish strategies, Musk is blaming “activist groups” for the decline in revenue. But what he is actually complaining about is that people other than himself are exercising their rights to free speech. Musk, like many right-wingers, thinks that free speech means that no one can disagree with whatever you say. And if anyone does disagree, and communicates their disagreement to others, they are insufficiently grateful for the crumbs that you scatter among them.

Musk also asserts that “nothing has changed with content moderation.” That’s technically true. However, hate mongering Twitter users anticipating the “free-for-all hellscape” that he has outlined for Twitter didn’t wait for any official starting gun to go off. The bile began spewing almost immediately upon the news that Musk closed the deal. As reported by ABC News…

“A new study from Montclair State University showed a dramatic increase in hate speech on Twitter immediately following Elon Musk’s acquisition of the social media platform. […] In similar research by the cyber research organization Network Contagion Research Institute, the use of the N-word racial epithet skyrocketed by over 500% on the website.”

Now Musk is surprised that the predictions of fleeing advertisers are coming true. Already some major advertisers have suspended their buys on Twitter. They include General Mills, Audi, General Motors, Pfizer, Ford, Mondelez (Oreos), and Volkswagen. Musk’s shock and anger over this illustrates his opposition to the free market. These companies have every right to protect their brands from the harm of being associated with the hate speech that Musk is encouraging.

So in that one short tweet, Musk has demonstrated his opposition to free markets, as well as the fact that it is he who is “trying to destroy free speech in America.” What’s more, his distress over the loss of some revenue is especially grotesque coming after he reportedly fired half of the employees at Twitter. Which he is doing in order to offset his own losses due to the preposterous overpayment he made to acquire the company.

Musk obviously has no sympathy whatsoever for the much more severe loss of revenue that the Twitter employees will suffer. But so long as he manages to restore a tiny fraction of the fortune he lost buying Twitter, the suffering of others is their own problem.

NOTE: Twitter suspended the News Corpse account after 11 years without giving a reason. So if anyone wants to tweet articles from my website, please feel free to do so often and repeatedly.

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Tucker Carlson Defends Elon Musk’s Disgusting Tweet About the Attack on Nancy Pelosi’s Husband

Posted by Mark NC on November 1, 2022 at 11:17 am. 3 Comments :

Less than a week after Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter was completed, Musk himself provided the best evidence for why he may the worst person on the planet to own such a influential platform. His racism, misogyny, narcissism, and warped view of what constitutes free speech are the ingredients of everything that is wrong with Twitter. And now he is, in his own words, the “Chief Twit.”

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Following the attempted murder of Paul Pelosi, the husband of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Musk posted a tweet that spread a blatantly false conspiracy theory about the assault that was published by a notoriously fake news outlet. There was immediate revulsion and condemnation of Musk’s malicious comment, which led to his eventually deleting the tweet. Although, like Donald Trump, he never issued a correction or apology.

RELTAED: Trump’s Delusional, Desperate, and (as Always), Dishonest Response to Musk’s Twitter Takeover

Despite the fact that even Musk recognized that his tweet deserved deletion, Fox News Senior Fascista, Tucker Carlson, remained enamored of Musk and the grotesque remarks he made. On Monday night’s episode of his program, Carlson came to Musk’s defense with a monologue that embraced the fake news…

The New York Times “came out with a piece that says – and we’re quoting – ‘Elon Musk, in a tweet, shares a link from a site known to publish fake news.’ Really? What did Elon Musk do? Well, he linked to an article about how Paul Pelosi called the guy in his home a friend. Well, that’s what the 911 tape says. You can draw your own conclusions or not. Or maybe you don’t care, which is also fine. How is that fake? Seems to be real.”

Tucker Carlson is still winking and nodding at the debunked, homophobic conspiracy theory about the Pelosi attack spread by Elon Musk in his since deleted tweet pic.twitter.com/Te8kPdcVdF

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) November 1, 2022

Carlson deliberately mischaracterizes the incident saying that “Pelosi called the guy in his home a friend”? So, first of all, Carlson is describing the assailant, not as the attacker who broke into Pelosi’s home, but as a guy who just happened to be there. Also, Carlson is lying about what the 911 tape says. It was the 911 dispatcher who made the “friend” reference, not Pelosi. What’s more, the police reported that Pelosi was speaking in code because he didn’t want the assailant to catch on that he was talking to the police.

For the record, to answer Carlson’s question about what Elon Musk did, here is the truth. Musk posted a tweet replying to one by Hillary Clinton, wherein she noted correctly that…

“The Republican Party and its mouthpieces now regularly spread hate and deranged conspiracy theories. It is shocking, but not surprising, that violence is the result. As citizens, we must hold them accountable for their words and the actions that follow.”

Musk’s reply included the link to the obviously phony “Santa Monica Observer,” that is known for publishing crackpot conspiracy theories such as that Hillary Clinton had died and been replaced by a body double for a debate with Trump, and that Trump had appointed Kanye West to a high position at the Interior Department. And yet, the new owner of Twitter bought into the the whole sham.

Good God almighty. pic.twitter.com/Z6zJ0jwsaO

— Jeff (Gutenberg Parenthesis) Jarvis (@jeffjarvis) October 30, 2022

Notice that Musk added his own agreement with the bogus article saying that “there might be more to this story than meets the eye.” He also later mocked the criticism he received for spreading such loathsome lies in another tweet that took a sideways swipe at the New York Times for reporting about him accurately.

Just in case you thought there might be a scintilla of remorse coming for sharing disinformation to 110 million people about an assassination attempt targeting the Speaker of the House. pic.twitter.com/5e7MOrHmLw

— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) October 31, 2022

So Musk dismisses the obscene dishonesty and callousness of his original remark. And his pal Tucker Carlson rushes to rationalize, and even agree with, Musk’s horrendous conspiracy mongering. But then, that’s to be expected from Carlson and Fox News, where lies and conspiracies comprise the bulk of what they broadcast. It has been their mission from day one. And it will continue for as long as their are cult minded viewers dumb enough to believe them.

NOTE: Twitter suspended the News Corpse account after 11 years without giving a reason. So if anyone wants to tweet articles from my website, please feel free to do so often and repeatedly.

Be sure to visit and follow News Corpse
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And check out my books on Amazon:

Fox Nation vs. Reality:
The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.

Thanks so much for your support.

The Internet's Chronicle of Media Decay

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