Tag: social media

Social media erupts after cancel culture claims career of 47-year NYTimes journalist

Many on social media were outraged that a journalist with a celebrated 47-year career was undone by what using an racial slur in an unintentionally offensive manner.

“This reads like a confession procured by the Khmer Rouge. It’s both ridiculous and terrifying,” replied Andrew Sullivan.

“A culture that lacks grace is both punitive and miserable. Does intent matter? Does forgiveness exist?” asked David French.

“It is now official NYT policy that for some words, intent does not matter, and it only takes one strike to sink a 47-year career,” said Reason editor-at-large Matt Welch.

“This reads like a Bolshevik at his own show trial admitting he’d betrayed the revolution even though he never meant to betray the revolution because he loves the revolution,” said Peter Savodnik of Vanity Fair.

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YouTube Financially Deplatforms Swath Of Indie Media Accounts

The Google-owned video sharing platform YouTube has demonetized numerous independent media accounts, a jarring escalation in the steadily intensifying campaign against alternative news outlets online.

Progressive commentators Graham Elwood, The Progressive Soapbox, The Convo Couch, Franc Analysis, Hannah Reloaded and Cyberdemon531 have all received notifications from YouTube that their videos are no longer permitted to earn money through the platform’s various monetization features, as has Ford Fischer, a respected freelancer who films US political demonstrations. No explanation has been offered for this decision beyond the vague claim that “your channel is not in line with our YouTube Partner Program policies” due to “harmful content”.

Like all large online platforms, YouTube’s appeals process is notoriously opaque and unaccountable. These accounts could remain demonetized for months, or forever, without any clear explanation at all. Ford Fischer, who has been in this situation before, said on Twitter that his account was left demonetized for seven months before YouTube reversed its decision.

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Bill Would Force Social Media Users To Secretly Report Suspicious People To Law Enforcement

Senator Joe Manchin wants to bring DHS’s spy on your neighbors “If You See, Something Say Something”  program to social media, blogs, websites, and much more. Manchin’s bill, the “See Something, Say Something Online Act” would essentially turn social media users into federal spies by forcing them to report suspicious people to law enforcement.

Just how bad is this bill?

This bill would essentially force anyone on social media to report suspicious “transmissions” to law enforcement.

Known Suspicious Transmission.—The term ‘‘known suspicious transmission’’ is any suspicious transmission that an interactive computer  service should have reasonably known to have occurred or have been notified of by a director, officer, employ, agent, interactive computer service user, or State or Federal law enforcement agency.

Major Crime —The term ‘‘major crime’’ means a Federal criminal offense that is a crime of violence (as defined 13 in section 16 of title 18, United States Code); relating to domestic or international terrorism (as those terms are defined in section 16 2331 of title 18, United States Code)

What exactly is a known suspicious transmission or major crime?

Suspicious Transmission is defined as any post, private message, comment, tag, transaction, or any other user-generated content or transmission that government officials later determine commits, facilitates, incites, promotes, or otherwise assists the commission of a major crime. Major crimes are defined as anything involving violence, domestic, or international terrorism, or a serious drug offense.

How could social media users, bloggers, web forum moderators, web conferencing users etc., know that a comment left or uttered by someone would later lead to them committing a major crime?

The See Something, Say Something Online Act would force social media users into red flagging every person’s comments just in case someone commits a major crime in the future.

This bill would effectively destroy the First Amendment as we know it, dispelling any vestiges of America still being a free country.

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Twitter mocks Jen Psaki for nonsensical gender identity answer to question about stock market chaos

Social media erupted after a scheme from users on a Reddit stock market thread threatened to damage Wall Street hedge funds by driving up the price of the stocks from GameStop, a company many had heavily bet against.

When White House press secretary Jen Psaki was questioned about the incident, she offered a bizarre response.

“Well, I’m also happy to repeat that we have the first female Treasury secretary and a team that’s surrounding her,” Psaki said.

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