#Trump Twitter Suspension

[jonostroveart]

The Reanimation of Putrid Flesh

[cherrybizomb]

I got suspended from Twitter cause I said Kanye and Trump deserve to be shot and honestly, it's the funniest fucking thing I've ever done in my life

[mitigatedchaos]

Trump at the 2024 RNC

(~1,300 words, 6 minutes)

Thoughts on the final night of the Trump Convention.

#1A: A lot of this stuff is, right or wrong, very obvious. For example, the stuff from the school safety speaker. It's obvious that having students assaulting the staff will be bad for both the staff and the other students.

#1B: I was in a group chat with some Republicans, and one woman asked why Obama/Biden instituted the rule from the school safety segment; I speculated that they probably saw a correlation between suspensions and later arrests, and assumed the suspensions caused the arrests. "That's so stupid," she said. (There is an alternative theory for school discipline - it applies smaller punishments to smaller infractions, so that students' first brush with institutional discipline isn't from the cops.)

#2: Hulk Hogan knew what he was there to do, and he did it. The classic shirt-ripping and muscles contribute to the sense of vigor, but really, the whole convention still feels ten years older than 2015. (I've heard that he took down Gawker with help from Peter Thiel, and Gawker was involved in obnoxious 2014-era antics beyond just harassing Hogan. I suppose with this, his debt is repaid.)

#3: It would seem the Erick Trump was chosen to speak for the "they... came after Trump!" faction of the Trump coalition, moreso than Trump himself. Makes sense strategically.

#4A: The "perhaps God... protected Trump" bit honestly feels crass, basically just there because Dems lost the active shooter roll. No, I don't mean because the shooter didn't hit; I mean they lost the roll to avoid having a shooter show up in the first place.

#4B: While Trump did have a segment on the shooting, and used a photo prominently circling the flying bullet, he doesn't call for revenge! and seemingly just groups it in with all his other complaints, like the lawsuits, media coverage that he's a "threat to democracy," and so on. I think implicitly, almost everyone is assuming the assailant was mentally ill in some way.

#4C: On Twitter, there were some attempts to argue that either Trump himself or the Trump movement don't care about the other victims of the shooter. At >$6.2M in fundraising, the Trump movement have basically raised a full weregild for each one. And of course, there was a dedicated segment on them with a moment of silence.

This fits with the Trump mentality. There are reports of him being obnoxious to bill by contractors, but 'that's business.' Trump likes to think of himself as generous outside of this context, or at least that's the image he likes to project. For him, I think this is one of the benefits of being rich.

This was always going to be a dumb angle of attack, but it's not surprising a lot of Twitter Democrats tried it anyway.

#5: Trump's language was quite simplistic in this speech, especially in the assassination section.

#6: Quite frankly, not all of these economic policies are great ideas.

With that said, the consistent message is "we're all going to be rich!" which, again, right or wrong, is an obvious message. Support for energy abundance? Also obvious.

'We'll let you choose whether to have either a gasoline, hybrid, or electric vehicle'? Very obvious, given current problems with electrical charging infrastructure. In some parts of the country, the cables for electrical chargers even get cut to steal the copper. (More information on that here.)

Aside: Fuels

Gasoline is a lower-trust energy storage and transportation option. Plug-in electric hybrids, which can charge at home and refill with gasoline on the go, are likely the future for the next several decades.

Thinking in terms of fundamental characteristics, there is different balance of trade-offs for synthetic fuel, electricity transmission, and battery storage. Both creating synthetic fuel and charging a battery result in energy losses. Synthetic fuel creation losses are higher on a per-charge basis than battery charging. However, the battery itself is much more energy-intensive to create than a fuel tank. Thus, an attacker would prefer to steal the gasoline instead of the fuel tank holding it, and the battery itself instead of the electricity it contains.

Electricity transmission requires long-distance material infrastructure between the source and the destination. If you have a favorable security environment, that's not a problem. There are reports that electricity pylons are being robbed of their structural supports in South Africa. A more obvious problem - building a massive solar farm in the Sahara and an intercontinental electrical grid to transmit the energy from it leaves you vulnerable along the entire transmission length.

Anywhere with lots of consistent sunlight and access to water (preferably salt water for ecological reasons), where political forces support the necessary infrastructure and are willing to hire engineers, can be a source of synthetic fuels. This is a much more favorable security environment.

#7: A good chunk of the speech is just Trump saying the things he's going to do.

Trump remains the low-trust candidate, which I think is something that a lot of professionals who are Democrats don't really understand. In a low-trust environment, where people don't trust that your rhetoric is correlated to the conversion of money into positive outcomes, you want simple promises with easily observable results, not high ideological rhetoric. (Matt Yglesias wrote about this in 2021. You may not trust Matt himself, but the logic of it is simple.)

Trump blowing off the fancy rhetoric frightens professional types, because it makes it look like anything could be up for sale, but establishes his credibility among people who think professional types are lying. (For example, how they continuously screw-up major blue municipalities.) This is part of the whole deal with Trump 1 and The Wall.

#8: Not a lot of 'uniting' going on here. There's a bit of it, but it's definitely leaning towards, 'we should unite... by voting for me,' rather than outreach.

If you thought he was going to deliver a galaxy-brain genius speech and completely break the context and win with 70%, you're going to be disappointed.

#9: A more competent, more virtuous, and more epistemically rigorous Democratic Party could have taken away 50% of Trump's issues, and left him with a lot less material to campaign on.

To me, it doesn't feel like Trump was selected by providence to lead the United States to a glorious new era - it feels more like he was selected to humiliate everyone else, by forcing them to make a choice.

To quote a random Twitter user:

"Ackshually Kamala wasn't 'in charge' of the border mkay she was just asked to study the 'root causes' of why migrants come from the top 3 nations we basically assigned her a term paper we wouldn't actually give her any real authority OK don't you get it?" This is, somehow, meant to be a defense of her. The press have adopted a lawyerly attitude toward "the truth." They are addicted to finding technicalities and have no interest in what is, in the broadest sense, true. This is why Trump deranges them: he serially exaggerates and bullshits while expressing fundamental truths.

In theory, this shouldn't be a close election. Obviously the reality TV star whose statements are extremely loose should lose.

In theory, this shouldn't be a close election. Obviously the faction that thinks it's OK for teachers to get beat up in schools should lose.

In the groupchat, I said, "The people that get mugged and change their party registration, I can work with. It's the people that get mugged and don't change their opinion that are scary."

One of the Republicans had an interesting response. "It's because they think they deserve it," he said.

[mariacallous]

X appears to be working with a well-known Republican consulting group, seemingly to handle the messaging around the social media platform’s suspension in Brazil.

When WIRED emailed X for comment about the rapidly evolving situation in Brazil, a reply came from Michael Abboud, the managing director of the conservative consulting and public relations firm Targeted Victory. According to his LinkedIn, Abboud worked for the State Department in the last year of the Trump administration and as press secretary for former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s campaign.

Targeted Victory has had contracts with several Republican campaigns and political action committees (PACs) this election season to the tune of more than $75 million, according to OpenSecrets. The group’s largest client is the Republican National Committee, which spent $11,128,739 on the firm between January 2023 and May 2024.

In his emailed reply, Abboud referred WIRED to a company statement from X about the suspension of the platform in Brazil, and said to reach out with further questions.

Elon Musk, X’s owner, has become more overt about his personal political views in recent months. In July, shortly following the assassination attempt on former president Donald Trump, Musk said he would be backing his candidacy for president. He then said he’d establish a PAC to support Trump to the tune of $45 million per month (he later backpedaled on the exact amount).

WIRED reached out to Targeted Victory and Abboud directly, and neither immediately responded to a request for comment.

X would not be the first tech company to work with the group. In 2022, reporting from The Washington Post found that Meta had hired Targeted Victory to run a campaign to sour public opinion on TikTok. The messaging campaign focused on framing TikTok, which is owned by the Chinese company ByteDance, as a threat to Americans’ privacy and to the mental health of teens and children.

An emailed response from Targeted Victory on behalf of X is particularly notable; when journalists contact the press team at X, they rarely receive a reply. When Musk took over Twitter in 2022, one of his first moves as CEO was to lay off a substantial number of the company’s 6,000 employees. That move included not only the vast majority of the platform’s trust and safety team—the people who keep hate speech and disinformation off the platform—but also the company’s communications team.

For nearly a year, the auto-response to the press email returned the poop emoji. More recently, the auto-response says “Busy now, please check back later.”

But X and Musk have been having an unusually rough time in the public eye over the past few weeks. After X violated an April court order from the Brazil’s Superior Electoral Court, which had required the company to remove certain accounts and content that the court said spread disinformation about the integrity of the country’s elections, Judge Alexandre de Moraes ordered access to the platform blocked in Brazil. The country is X’s third largest market, and for months Musk has railed against Moraes online, calling him a dictator, accusing the court of censorship, and even comparing him to the Harry Potter villain Lord Voldemort.

Meanwhile, Nick Pickles, the company’s head of global affairs, announced on Thursday that he was resigning, and investors are saying their investments in the company are performing substantially worse than any had predicted.

[tomorrowusa]

Elon Musk continues to empower Nazis. Kanye West (or whatever he's currently calling himself) has been reinstated on Twitter (or whatever Elon is currently calling it).

Kanye West famously brought fellow Nazi Nick Fuentes to dinner with Donald Trump last year.

X, formerly known as Twitter, has reinstated Kanye West’s account on the social media platform. West will not be able to monetize his account, and no ads will appear next to his posts, the company told the Wall Street Journal on Saturday. The musician’s account was suspended in December for violating the platform’s rules on inciting violence. The suspension followed multiple antisemitic comments made by West – who has legally changed his name to Ye – including a threat to “Go death con 3 on JEWISH PEOPLE.” Those statements led to a swift disintegration of multiple business deals, including partnerships with Adidas and luxury fashion house Balenciaga.

If Elon Musk isn't a Nazi himself, he's a fellow traveler. He certainly doesn't want anybody keeping tabs on the explosion of hate speech on the platform since he took over.

Elon Musk has over the last year threatened legal action against tech competitors, employees and people who use Twitter, which he owns. Now he is also taking aim at an organization that studies hate speech and misinformation on social media. X Corp., the parent company of the social media company, sent a letter on July 20 to the Center for Countering Digital Hate, a nonprofit that conducts research on social media, accusing the organization of making “a series of troubling and baseless claims that appear calculated to harm Twitter generally, and its digital advertising business specifically,” and threatening to sue. The letter cited research published by the Center for Countering Digital Hate in June examining hate speech on Twitter, which Mr. Musk has renamed X.com. The research consisted of eight papers, including one that found that Twitter had taken no action against 99 percent of the 100 Twitter Blue accounts the center reported for “tweeting hate.” The letter called the research “false, misleading or both” and said the organization had used improper methodology.

Twitter Blue is apparently a license to post hate speech.

In a blog post Monday evening, X announced that it had filed a lawsuit against the Center for Countering Digital Hate for “actively working to prevent free expression.” The suit was filed in federal court in the Northern District of California. Twitter’s advertising business has been struggling under the ownership of Mr. Musk, who bought the company last year. U.S. ad revenue for the five weeks from April 1 to the first week of May was $88 million, down 59 percent from a year earlier. Advertisers may have been spooked by Mr. Musk’s changes to the social network, including the removal of rules of what can or can’t be said on the service and more ads featuring online gambling and marijuana products.

Hate speech is a major turnoff for most advertisers. Elon thinks that if the Center for Countering Digital Hate stops publicizing the massive hate speech problem at Twitter then advertisers will flood back to the platform.

Elon, did anybody ever tell you that you're a dumb shit? 🫵🏼

Twitter/X is not going to get any better – just the opposite. Elon Musk is determined to turn it into a safe space for far right hatemongers.

If you are still on Twitter then you will increasingly be associated with Nazis, conspiracy loonies, and other lowlife dregs of social media who are welcomed there. No matter how much you may try to avoid the mess there you will inevitably step in their shit.

Fight hate speech on Elon Musk's Twitter and on other platforms. Support the Center for Countering Digital Hate

[solarbird]

Followup Friday

I’ve got another very busy day so no essay for your Friday, I’m afraid. But I do have a follow-up.

Remember that article I posted recently about how the the fundamentalist – now Christofascist/MAGA – movement grinds out fake “science,” the methods they use, and how they’ve been adapted by the right in general? I gave a few examples, the most recent of which was the Cass Report against gender affirming therapy in Britain.

Well, the British Medical Association are calling them on it and demanding that absolutely none of it be implemented.

It’s good to see action starting to be taken over there. The Tory-American fundamentalist alliance has been allowed to go too far for too long.

The latest followup on Elon Musk’s efforts to use the former Twitter as a fascist propaganda fountain continues, with his suspension of the White Dudes for Harris account, clearly in retaliation for their highly successful fundraiser for Harris.

His MAGA/pro-Trump PAC is also running ads that intentionally mislead people into thinking they’re registering to vote online. Instead of registering you to vote, it all goes into their PACs database for individually-targeted propaganda.

Tell your friends and family about that one in particular, it’s extra skeevy even for Musk.

Trump keeps saying he’s really not concerned about the votes, that ‘we have all the votes we need,’ so here are a few relevant stories on that:

A Christian Nationalist ‘Trojan Horse’ In The Election Room

These Swing State Election Officials Are Pro-Trump Election Deniers

‘Wild west of election work’: How certification fights are already cropping up in battleground states

Russian propaganda sources themselves say that Russia is likely working with Trump and his team, just as before.

Remember that flurry last week about “you won’t have to vote anymore“? Well, as one might expect, given the chance to back off of that on Fox News, he doubled down on it instead.

All that MAGA asks is that you give Trump unending power and limitless immunity from the law, and in return, you get to have… uh… unending fealty to Diaper Don and… uh… MAGA!!!

Man, if you thought ear bandages day was weird, wait’ll you get to diaper week.

Remember to work on your Trumpy family and friends today, everybody. Let them know what’s at stake, because the media won’t. And good luck.

94 days remain.

[spnscripthunt-inactive]

We'll no longer be sharing new content on twitter, we'll be sharing it here, in our discord, and on our new instagram: https://linktr.ee/spnscripthunt

Why?

It's not just Musk giving Trump his account back or the deletion of the last two tweets prior to suspension of an account he supposedly won't be using.

It's because providing new content on twitter, be it new acquisitions or "from the archives," is tacit support of the changes in content moderation on twitter:

For the last 21 years, The Trevor Project has worked to save young lives by providing support through their free and confidential crisis programs on platforms where LGBTQ young people spend their time online and on the phone: our fundraising page https://give.thetrevorproject.org/spnscripthunt1306

[beardedmrbean]

Critics of Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., were outraged after reading Elon Musk and journalist Matt Taibbi’s latest "Twitter Files" entry alleging that Schiff lobbied Twitter to suspend journalists from the platform.

Published Tuesday, the latest round of the Twitter Files – internal documents revealing how Twitter engaged in censorship and promoted disinformation in tandem with government agencies for the past few years – revealed that Schiff’s office asked Twitter to remove journalist Paul Sperry and others from the site. 

Taibbi, who published the Twitter Files post-by-post to Twitter at the behest of Musk, provided documentation showing that "the office for Democrat and House Intel Committee chief Adam Schiff" asked "Twitter to ban journalist Paul Sperry."

TWITTER FILES: REP. ADAM SCHIFF'S OFFICE REQUESTED TECH GIANT TO SUSPEND ACCOUNTS

The document Taibbi shared featured correspondence between the "House Permanent Select Intelligence Committee" – Schiff’s office – and Twitter, which included a request to "Suspend the many accounts, including @GregRubini and @paulsperry, which repeatedly promoted false QAnon conspiracies and harassed [REDACTED]."

As Taibbi’s documentation indicated however, Twitter was reluctant to fulfill such a request, responding, "we’ll review the accounts again but I believe [REDACTED] mentioned only one qualified for suspension."

In response to Schiff’s office demanding Twitter remove "any and all content" as well as "quotes, retweets, and reactions to that content" concerning its staff members, Twitter flat-out refused.

A Twitter staffer responded, "no, this isn’t feasible/we don’t do this."

Sperry, an author and New York Post columnist, was later suspended from Twitter for unrelated reasons, telling conservative commentator Glenn Beck in August 2022 it was due to tweets of his about the FBI’s raid on former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence.

However, Sperry was reinstated to Twitter this week and immediately responded to the latest Twitter Files revelations. He claimed that the real reason Schiff sought his suspension was because, at the time, Sperry was reporting on the whistleblower who exposed the phone call to Ukraine that prompted Trump’s first impeachment. 

On Tuesday evening, Sperry wrote, "Around the same time Adam Schiff's office was lobbying Twitter to have me banned, Schiff's chief of staff Patrick Boland was making threats to my employer http://RealClearInvestigations.com about my stories exposing Schiff's impeachment whistleblower & his ties to Schiff's staffer."

In another tweet, Sperry linked to his 2019 article, and captioned it, saying, "Here's the real reason House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff secretly lobbied Twitter to have me banned -- he was angry I outed his anonymous impeachment ‘whistleblower.’"

TWITTER FILES PART 11 SHOWS HOW ‘PR CRISIS’ FOLLOWING 2016 ELECTION ALLOWED COMPANY TO EMBRACE INTEL COMMUNITY

Conservatives were appalled at Schiff’s apparent attempts to silence Sperry on Twitter, and used the platform to rip into the lawmaker. 

UFC champion Jake Shields felt as though Schiff should get a taste of his own medicine, tweeting, "I would like to request Elon Musk remove Adam Schiff from twitter."

Breitbart News Pentagon correspondent Kristina Wong summed up the shocking censorship story, tweeting, "Then-Intel Committee Chairman Adam Schiff’s office wanted Twitter to shut down one of the most effective journalists pushing back on his phony Russia collusion narrative. How very anti-freedom of the press this is."

The Spectator contributing editor Stephen L. Miller commented sarcastically, "Adam Schiff just using his 1A rights."

Journalist Adam Housley wrote, "This is disturbing. I don’t care what political party you follow…this cannot be accepted. @AdamSchiff needs to answer."

RealClearInvestigations senior writer Mark Hemingway tweeted, "Of course, Sperry's real crime was doing vital reporting exposing the mistruths about Russia collusion, a subject Schiff lied about for years."

Judicial Watch president Tom Fitton asked if this constituted "Another reason to expel Schiff from Congress?"

Conservative actor Randy Quaid quipped, "Schiff is a piece of Schiff!"

Conservative pundit and lawyer Will Chamberlain offered a solution, tweeting, "Adam Schiff should be expelled from Congress."

Author Jim Hanson remarked, "The only surprising thing here Is they didn't just wipe everyone out. The sickening thing is @RepAdamSchiff abused his office and oath to the Constitution with this malfeasance."

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

The Biden White House rebuked Donald Trump after the former President said the US Constitution should be “terminated” over his lie that the 2020 election was stolen.

Andrew Bates, a White House spokesperson, said: “Attacking the Constitution and all it stands for is anathema to the soul of our nation and should be universally condemned.”

Bates called the constitution a “sacrosanct document”, saying: “You cannot only love America when you win.”

Trump lost to Joe Biden in 2020, by more than 7 million votes and by 306-232 in the electoral college, a result he called a landslide when it was in his favour in 2016, against Hillary Clinton.

Trump continues to claim that Biden won key states through electoral fraud, a lie that fuelled the deadly attack on the US Capitol on 6 January 2021. Nine deaths have been linked to the riot, including law enforcement suicides. More than 950 people have been charged. This week, two members of the far-right Oath Keepers militia were convicted of seditious conspiracy. Other members of far-right pro-Trump groups face similar charges.

Trump was banned from Facebook and Twitter after the Capitol attack. He has not yet returned to the latter, despite its new owner, Elon Musk, saying he is free to do so. On Saturday, Trump used his own social media platform, Truth Social, to say of the 2020 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.” He also said an “unprecedented fraud requires an unprecedented cure”.

Trump was writing after Musk claimed he would show that Twitter was guilty of “free speech suppression” by releasing evidence of how the platform responded to requests from campaigns in the 2020 election.

Trump is the only declared candidate for the Republican nomination in 2024 but he has faced increased criticism from Republicans and Republican-supporting media since midterm elections in which many of his endorsed candidates were defeated, including election deniers in battleground states. Republicans took the House, but only by a narrow majority, and failed to retake the Senate.

On Saturday, Trump also criticised the Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, and “all of the weak Republicans who couldn’t get the presidential election of 2020 approved and out of the way fast enough”. Even after the Capitol riot, 147 Republicans objected to results in key states.

Senior Republicans have also criticised Trump over his decision to have dinner at his home in Florida with Nick Fuentes, a known white supremacist and antisemite. But though the Florida Governor, Ron DeSantis, has surged in polls regarding possible 2024 contenders, few in the party have broken decisively with Trump and those who have have largely been forced out.

On Saturday, Brian Schatz, a Democratic US Senator from Hawaii, pointed to such hard political reality, saying: “Trump just called for the suspension of the constitution and it is the final straw for zero Republicans, especially the ones who call themselves ‘constitutional conservatives’.”

One such conservative is Kevin McCarthy, the Republican leader battling to become House speaker. Not long before Trump said the constitution should be terminated, McCarthy said that when his party took control in January, it would demonstrate its constitutionalist bona fides by reading “every single word” of the hallowed document on the floor of the House.

On Sunday, Hakeem Jeffries, the newly elected Democratic leader in the House, told ABC’s This Week Trump had made “a strange statement, but the Republicans are going to have to work out their issues with the former president and decide whether they’re going to break from him and return to some semblance of reasonableness or continue to lean in to the extremism, not just of Trump, but of Trumpism”.

On the same show, Dave Joyce of Ohio, chair of the moderate Republican Governance Group, refused five opportunities to say he would not vote for Trump if he was the nominee in 2024.

Trump, Joyce said, “says a lot of things – but that doesn’t mean that it’s ever going to happen … We’re moving forward and we’re going to continue to move forward as a Republican majority and as a Republican conference.”

His host, George Stephanopoulos, said: “I don’t see how you can move forward if your candidate is for suspending the Constitution.”

On Saturday, Mehdi Hasan, who hosts a show on MSNBC, said all congressional Republicans should face such grilling, writing: “Do you support Donald Trump’s demand to ‘terminate’ the constitution? Doesn’t his demand disqualify him for running for the presidency? Two questions that every single Republican member of the House and Senate needs to be asked, again and again, in the coming days.”

Hasan also pointed to Trump’s dinner at his Florida resort, Mar-a-Lago, with Nick Fuentes, saying that in just two weeks the former president had “said or done things that would be lifelong scandals for other politicians … he truly knows how to flood the zone”. Trump critics on the political right did condemn the remark.

John Bolton, George W Bush’s UN ambassador who became Trump’s third national security adviser, said: “No American conservative can agree with Donald Trump’s call to suspend the constitution because of the results of the 2020 election. And all real conservatives must oppose his 2024 campaign for president.”

[exitrowiron]

I didn’t just delete the app, I also deactivated my account. I was never an Active Engaged User, but I initiated my account in 2011 and checked Twitter occasionally. Ending the suspension of Trump put me over the edge.

[tasteful-side-blog]

I was wondering if when you asked for their discord or when you exchanged discords, they were also verified? Cherp rules are kinda confusing and contradictory in certain parts like when it says you can’t move off site unless all are verified, but then the next rule says no discord exchanges or any social media exchanges. So then how would we move off site? Is it even okay if all are verified, but then you can’t even drop your discord handle without being banned?

lmao thank you for reminding me abt all that shit with Cherp it's been so long since i checked up on it. For the record it's still the only place (online or irl) I've ever been permanently banned and I think it's a really funny example of how you can take an active IP with a built in user base and still manage to fuck it up by being so deeply unprofessional and toxic that you're not worth putting up with. Twitter wishes it could blow up like Cherp.

If you think the rules are confusing and contradictory now you should have seen them back in the day, Throughout Cherubplay's entire existence there was never a ban on off-site promotion or exchanges and Cherp's rules about when/how interaction are acceptable have been showing up piecemeal ever since. At the time i was permanently banned the website had recently updated their rules stating that exchanging information was liable for a week suspension. Another user and I (who told me they regularly requested discord usernames with no issues and was not suspended when I was) exchange discords, I log in the next morning, my account has been permanently removed.

I join their discord group and learn that in the discord they decided the rules are changing now and all information exchanges are a permaban, if you weren't in the offsite discord to know that then tough shit, you're still gone.

I went through most of the important people on the mod team trying to discuss this, most seemed pissed that I dare question their supreme judgement Reddit mod style. I'm not exactly surprised the types of personalities who ran and ruined old-school RP forums still exist in lots of nerd spaces. I remember specifically bringing up that at the time the rule I'd been perma'd for still showed up on the website as a max 1 week suspension, the response was "we can decide to ban you for any reason, go away."

Like yeah! You sure can do that! It also just makes you a raging asshole and the last person that should have a customer facing position in your team.

One day someone's gonna do a YouTube essay deep dive on all the random bullshit that happened with their donations/ID verification/etc. but my brief experience with the whole team made me feel like they were the last people you should trust your personal information with. Also I'm not saying I'm a cyber crimes expert but either the problems the site faced w the FBI were unique (in which case, what the fuck) or they were trumped up to cover their asses when they faced public pushback (in which case, what the fuck).

idk dude all i can say is that i hope one day the nerds get the roleplay site they deserve

[90363462]

Elon Musk Suspends Kanye West's Twitter After INSANELY Antisemitic Alex Jones Interview & String Of Violent Tweets

Kanye West has been suspended from Twitter after a shocking day of jaw-dropping comments both on the social media app and in an interview with Alex Jones.

The 45-year-old rapper focused some of his Twitter attentions on its owner, Elon Musk, prior to his account being suspended late on Thursday. And Ye also used the platform to share a disgustingly inappropriate reference to Nazism and its former leader, Adolf Hitler. Get ready, y’all. This is a lot…

Related: Kim Kardashian Is ‘Relieved’ To Be Done With Ye Divorce — Yeah, No Kidding…

During a few-hour period last night, Ye tweeted several erratic messages. One of them included a picture of Elon standing shirtless on a yacht. Ye joked that its message, which painted Musk in an unflattering light, might be his last on the site.

That’s not what drove the Jesus Walks rapper off the app, though. At one point, he also tweeted a photo of a bizarre symbol that combined a Nazi swastika and the Star of David in one. That image went too far — and Ye was removed from the site. While CNN and others report they have been unable to confirm which post exactly was the one that drove Kanye from the bird app, his account is suspended now.

Elon himself even weighed in about that situation. Early on Thursday, he attempted to show Ye some level of patience. Replying to an earlier tweet from the rapper, Elon wrote:

Jesus taught love, kindness and forgiveness.

I used to think that turning the other cheek was weak & foolish, but I was the fool for not appreciating its profound wisdom.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 1, 2022

But hours later, it all ended.

On Thursday night, Musk re-addressed Ye’s later comments and image posts. Elon first replied “that is fine” in response to Ye’s tweet showing the “chief twit” shirtless on the yacht. But to the tweet containing swastika imagery overlaid on the Jewish religious symbol, Musk simply said “this is not.” Then, when another Twitter user begged Musk to “fix” Ye (?!), the Teslahead gave a deeper explanation:

“I tried my best. Despite that, he again violated our rule against incitement to violence. Account will be suspended.”

The Space X exec then reiterated his stance on Ye’s ouster in another subsequent response to a second user soon after:

“Just clarifying that his account is being suspended for incitement to violence, not an unflattering pic of me being hosed by Ari. Frankly, I found those pics to be helpful motivation to lose weight!”

Related: Kim K’s Famous Fam Hosts An Emergency Meeting Following Kanye Divorce Deal

Wow.

There’s a LOT of other s**t going on in the Ye universe right now, too.

For one, CNBC reported on Friday morning that Parler execs have called off the deal to sell their site to Ye. As Perezcious readers will remember, the right-wing social media app was set to be purchased by the Chicago-born rapper as Candace Owensworked to get Ye in on it following his first Twitter suspension back in October. But that deal is dead now.

Related: Kanye Hits Back Directly At His Former Hero Donald Trump

More critically, there is also still fallout flying from Ye’s otherdisastrous move: openly praising Hitler and Nazism in an interview with conspiracy theorist Alex Jones published on Thursday. The Gold Diggerrapper appeared in person and wore a mask covering his face and head. On set, Ye made a series of incredibly bizarre remarks. Some were so far out there that they appeared to make Jones uncomfortable, which is saying a lot…

At one point, Ye told the controversial host about how much he loves the Nazis’ World War II-era leader:

“Every human being has something of value that they brought to the table, especially Hitler. How about that one?”

Jones was thrown by the remark, and responded how he felt “most Jews are great people.” Alex also said he believed Kim Kardashian‘s ex-husband has “a bit of a Hitler fetish going on.” Ye replied:

“It’s not a fetish. I just like information.”

Unbelievably, Jones kept trying to calm the situation. (Think about that! The situation was so f**ked, it took Alex f**king Jones to try to walk things back?!?!) The conspiracy theorist told Ye:

“You’re not Hitler. You’re not a Nazi. You don’t deserve to be described as that.”

But the rapper doubled down:

“I see good things about Hitler, also.”

Later in the interview, undeterred over being cast out by Jones, Ye added that it was “time to promote love.” The Yeezy brand head’s suggestion for love looked like this:

“I don’t like the word ‘evil’ next to Nazis. I love Jewish people, but I also love Nazis. … I do love Hitler. I do love the Zionists.”

The f**k…?! That’s sick.

Over on Twitter, that s**t show combined with Ye’s suspension from the platform hours later sent users into overdrive. As to be expected, Ye’s name trended worldwide. And there were no shortage of takes and reactions to everything that went down on Thursday afternoon and evening.

Some shared unbelievable snippets of Ye’s disturbing commentary from Jones’ broadcast, like this clip (below) in which the rapper offers a bizarre wild aside on Israeli politician Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu:

kanye west has lost his fucking mind. pic.twitter.com/6JJvPVyL49

— Marisa Kabas (@MarisaKabas) December 1, 2022

Uhhh…

And other users offered up many more of their own opinions on Ye’s behavior:

“You know Kanye has reached a point of no return when he makes Alex Jones look normal.”

“kanye west has had the most severe fall from grace of anyone in history like you couldn’t even dream this up”

“This is Nazism. When are we going to say ENOUGH?”

“Stop blaming mental illness for Kanye West’s anti-Semitic and racist rants. I have mental illness and know a lot of people who do and not once has it caused anyone to cause bigotry. Kanye is just a f**king loser. Period.”

“Kanye West has been suspended from this app. He shouldn’t have been allowed back to begin with and he should never be allowed back again. Period.”

“F**k Kanye. F**k Nazis. F**k Alex Jones. F**k ’em all; especially Hitler.”

Wow. Just wow. Where the f**k does all this go from here? So vile.

[Image via WENN/Avalon]

Sent from my iPhone

[vanyelle]

Just read this NY Times article and burst out laughing at how absurd and beautiful this implosion is (not funny for the former employees, but just the absurdity of the situation as a whole is hilarious).

In “gearing up for legal battles,” Musk is literally creating future legal battles.

Thought I’d share a text-only copy-paste of the article under the cut.

Musk Shakes Up Twitter’s Legal Team as He Looks to Cut More Costs

Twitter has stopped paying rent on offices and is considering not paying severance packages to former employees, among other measures.

By Ryan Mac, Mike Isaac and Kate Conger

Dec. 13, 2022

5 min read

SAN FRANCISCO — Over the past two weeks, Elon Musk has shaken up Twitter’s legal department, disbanded a council that advised the social media company on safety issues and is continuing to take drastic steps to cut costs.

Mr. Musk appears to be gearing up for legal battles at Twitter, which he purchased in October for $44 billion, according to seven people familiar with internal conversations. He and his team have revamped Twitter’s legal department and pushed out one of his closest advisers in the process. They have also instructed employees to not pay vendors in anticipation of potential litigation, the people said.

To cut costs, Twitter has not paid rent for its San Francisco headquarters or any of its global offices for weeks, three people close to the company said. Twitter has also refused to pay a $197,725 bill for private charter flights made the week of Mr. Musk’s takeover, according to a copy of a lawsuit filed in New Hampshire District Court and obtained by The New York Times.

Twitter’s leaders have also discussed the consequences of denying severance payments to thousands of people who have been laid off since the takeover, two people familiar with the talks said. And Mr. Musk has threatened employees with lawsuits if they talk to the media and “act in a manner contrary to the company’s interest,” according to an internal email sent last Friday.

The aggressive moves signal that Mr. Musk is still slashing expenditures and is bending or breaking Twitter’s previous agreements to make his mark. His reign has been characterized by chaos, a series of resignations and layoffs, reversals of the platform’s previous suspensions and rules, and capricious decisions that have driven away advertisers.

Mr. Musk did not respond to a request for comment.

As he has transitioned into the role of Twitter’s new leader, Mr. Musk has had a cast of rotating legal professionals by his side. In October, he fired both Twitter’s chief legal officer and general counsel “for cause” within hours of closing his acquisition and installed his personal lawyer, Alex Spiro, to head up legal and policy matters at the company.

Mr. Spiro is no longer working at Twitter, according to six people familiar with the decision. Those people said that Mr. Musk has been unhappy with some of the decisions made by Mr. Spiro, a noted criminal defense lawyer who successfully defended the billionaire in a high-profile defamation case in late 2019 and worked his way into the Twitter owner’s inner circle.

Among those decisions was Mr. Spiro’s call to retain the Twitter deputy general counsel, James A. Baker, through Mr. Musk’s various rounds of layoffs and firings. Mr. Baker had served as general counsel at the F.B.I. until May 2018 — advising the agency on politically fraught investigations into Hillary Clinton’s private email server and Donald J. Trump’s campaign — and joined Twitter in 2020.

Last week, Mr. Musk said he terminated Mr. Baker after he learned that the lawyer had been responsible for reviewing internal communications about the company’s decision to suppress a 2020 New York Post story about Hunter Biden’s laptop. Mr. Musk had ordered that those communications, which he has called the “Twitter Files,” be given to a group of journalists to release and discredit the decision-making of the company’s past executives.

With Twitter drained of legal talent from layoffs and departures, Mr. Musk has sought lawyers from his other companies, including rocket maker SpaceX, to fill the void. More than half a dozen lawyers from the space exploration company have been given access to Twitter’s internal systems, according to two people and documents seen by The Times. SpaceX employees who have been brought in to Twitter include Chris Cardaci, the company’s vice president of legal, and Tim Hughes, its senior vice president, global business and government affairs.

A SpaceX spokesman did not return a request for comment.

Among its legal challenges, Twitter is facing more questions from the Federal Trade Commission, which is investigating whether the company is still adhering to a consent decree. In 2011, the company signed a consent decree with the F.T.C. after two data breaches and said it would not mislead users about privacy protection. In May, the company paid $150 million to the F.T.C. and Justice Department to settle allegations that it had violated the terms of that consent decree, which was expanded.

The F.T.C. has sent Twitter letters asking whether it still has the resources and staff to adhere to the consent decree, two people with knowledge of the matter said. An F.T.C. spokeswoman declined to comment.

On Friday, as Mr. Musk encouraged the release of internal information through the continuation of his Twitter Files, he also sent an email to employees noting “many detailed leaks of confidential Twitter information” showed that some were violating their nondisclosure agreements.

“If you clearly and deliberately violate the NDA that you signed when joining Twitter, you accept liability to the full extent of the law and Twitter will immediately seek damages,” he wrote. The email was first reported by the Platformer newsletter.

Mr. Musk’s team has also deliberated the merits of not paying severance to the thousands of people who have left the company since he took over, when there were about 7,500 full-time employees. While Mr. Musk and his advisers had previously considered forgoing any severance when discussing cuts in late October, the company ultimately decided that U.S.-based employees would be given at least two months of pay and one month of severance pay so that the company would be compliant with federal and state labor laws.

Mr. Musk’s team is now reconsidering whether it should pay some of those months, according to two people familiar with the discussions, or just face lawsuits from disgruntled former employees. Many former employees still have not received any paperwork formalizing their separation from Twitter, five people said. Mr. Musk has already refused to pay millions of dollars in exit packages to executives he claims were terminated “for cause.”

As Twitter has downsized, Mr. Musk’s team has been hoping to renegotiate the terms of lease agreements, two people familiar with the discussion said. The company has received complaints from real estate investment and management firms including Shorenstein, which owns the San Francisco buildings that Twitter occupies.

A spokesman for Shorenstein declined to comment.

In other money-saving moves, Twitter has laid off its kitchen staff and begun to list office supplies, industrial-grade kitchen equipment and electronics from its San Francisco office for auction.

Mr. Musk also continues to cut staff and leaders, including Nelson Abramson, Twitter’s global head of infrastructure, and Alan Rosa, the global information technology head and vice president of information security, according to four people familiar with the moves.

On Sunday night, Mr. Musk sent two emails to Twitter’s staff with advice about how to work for him that he had previously shared with SpaceX and Tesla employees. One message focused on first principles thinking, a worldview based on the teachings of Aristotle to reduce assumptions to basic axioms, which Mr. Musk credited with helping him make difficult decisions. The other advocated against workplace hierarchies.

On Monday, Twitter notified members of its trust and safety council, an advisory group formed in 2016, that it would dissolve immediately. The council was created to guide Twitter through challenging safety problems and content moderation issues, and was made up of organizations focused on civil rights and child safety.

“Safety online can mean survival offline,” said Jodie Ginsberg, the president of the Committee to Protect Journalists, one of the organizations involved in the council. “As a platform that has become a critical tool in both open and repressive countries, Twitter must play a constructive role in ensuring that journalists and the public at large are able to receive and impart information without fear of reprisals.”

Michael S. Schmidt contributed reporting. Kitty Bennett contributed research.

A correction was made on Dec. 13, 2022:

An earlier version of this article misstated the role of an executive for SpaceX who was brought in to Twitter. The executive, Tim Hughes, is senior vice president for global business and government affairs, not general counsel. The error was repeated in a photo caption.

[grompf3]

Twitter et Elon Musk : LOL ? Pas si sûr...

On se marre bien en regardant la merde que fait Elon Musk avec Twitter, hein ? LOL. Il annonce la suspension de comptes de journalistes, puis il les rétabli. Il suspend le compte JoinMastodon puis le rétabli. Il annonce qu'il va interdire toute promotion d'un autre réseau social, puis il annule ce nouveau règlement. Il bloque la possibilité de partager des liens vers Mastodon, puis il le permet à nouveau. Qu'est-ce qu'on se marre, hein ?

On se marre tellement qu'on se précipite sur Twitter pour en parler. Si, si.

Rappelons qu'un réseau social vit de l'usage que l'on en fait. Donc, lorsque je me rends sur Twitter pour critiquer ou ironiser sur ce qu'il s'y passe, je contribue à son succès.

Et on finit par se réjouir de chaque petite marche arrière comme une victoire. Super ! Il a rétabli les comptes des journalistes suspendus ! Super ! Je peux de nouveau partager un lien vers Mastodon ! Débouchons le champagne... Et oublions tous les comptes liés à l'extrême-droite, parfois ouvertement antisémites, voire un peu nazis sur les bords, qu'il a rétablis. Oublions que nous nous habituons à ce que des comptes puissent sauter du jour au lendemain par le seul fait du Prince.

Ne pensons pas à ce qu'il va pouvoir faire en imposant ces règles et ses choix technique. Oublions aussi ce que nous avons appris de l'affaire Cambridge Analyitica par exemple.

Continuons de faire semblant de croire qu'Elon Musk est bête. Oublions qu'il est un chef d'entreprise avisé. Oublions les enseignements de l'Histoire, qui nous montrent comment de très grosses fortunes se sont payés des organes de presse dans le passé pour servir leurs intérêts et diffuser leurs idées. En France, on peut regarder ce que fait Bolloré. On peut trouver que Cyril Hannouna est grotesque, comme Pascal Praud et quelques autres. Mais il n'empêche que ça fonctionne. Le succès est là. Et un milliardaire d'extrême-droite se bâtit son empire médiatique. Que s'est-il passé aux USA avec Fox News, contrôlé par Murdoch ?

Alors imaginez ce qu'Elon Musk pourra faire avec un outil comme Twitter. Surtout si même les gens qui le critiquent le plus continuons de contribuer au succès de la plateforme.

Alors je gueule, je râle. Mais mon compte Twitter est toujours là. J'ai 5'700 followers là-bas. C'est beaucoup je trouve. Et j'ai de la peine à m'imaginer perdre cette audience. Alors que l'enjeu pour moi n'est pas vital. Je ne suis qu'un twittos lambda, un amateur. Je m'imagine dans la peau d'un politicien, d'un journaliste, d'un CM d'une entreprise, d'un responsable associatif, d'un militant membre d'un collectif. Comment lâcher Twitter ?

Il n'y aura pas de miracles : ça va demander des efforts. Il faudra explorer, essayer, perdre du temps. Sans doute faudra-t-il passer par une démarche multi-plateforme, ce que j'essaie de faire là, maintenant, tout de suite, en publiant ce billet de blog ici, billet que je vais aller repartager ailleurs.

Nous rions aujourd'hui d'Elon Musk, comme nous avions pu rire en 2016 de ce personnage grotesque qu'était Donald Trump. Pendant que nous rions, un projet politique avance.

Alors non, pas LOL.

[sethshead]

Should I get off all social media because these platforms are willing to forgive and forget an attempted autogolpe? Would such an act of protest do any good?

[nothinglahhh]

Is Twitter’s censure of Donald Trump while he was still a President a violation of “free speech” principles and democracy?

After Twitter has a close review from Donald Trump's account, Twitter decided to ban Donald Trump from its platform. I think this action did not violate the principles of free speech and democracy. There are few reason to support my point of view.

First reason, I think there is no free speech “right” to incite violence. There is no free speech argument in existence that suggests an incitement of lawlessness and violence is protected speech. Quite to the contrary. Nineteenth century free speech proponent John Stuart Mill argued the sole reason one’s liberty may be interfered with (including restrictions on free speech) is “self-protection” — in other words, to protect people from harm or violence.

Additionally, incitement to violence is a criminal offence in all liberal democratic orders. There is an obvious reason for this: violence is harmful. It harms those who are immediately targeted and those who are intimidated as a result of the violence to take action or speak up against it.

Secondly, I think there is no free speech “right” to appear on a particular platform. There is also no free speech argument that guarantees any citizen the right to express their views on a specific platform and this is ludicrous. If this “right” were to exist, it would mean any citizen could demand to have their opinions aired on newspaper and, if refused, claim their free speech had been violated.

Besides, Twitter is a private company, not a government. The First Amendment was designed to prevent Congress or the states from blocking people’s freedom to express themselves. In fact, you could argue that it protects the right of a company such as Twitter to decide for itself what content to allow. The government can’t push a private company to publish something it doesn’t want to publish, said John Morris, who has served in leading telecommunication roles in two presidential administrations and is now a fellow at the Brookings Institution. Moreover, Twitter is a platform that can regulate its content as it wishes, in accordance with its own terms of service. Morris said there are no laws that restrict the ability of platforms or websites to regulate their content. And if Trump doesn’t like it, he is welcome to go to another platform.

What does exist is a general right to express oneself in public discourse, relatively free from regulation, as long as one’s speech does not harm others. Therefore, I think free speech may be harmful against people or things if it used in a wrong way, so censoring some of the unsuitable content to show on platforms is acceptable.

References

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/05/29/no-twitter-did-not-violate-trumps-freedom-speech/

https://theconversation.com/no-twitter-is-not-censoring-donald-trump-free-speech-is-not-guaranteed-if-it-harms-others-153092

https://theconversation.com/trumps-twitter-tantrum-may-wreck-the-internet-139660

https://theconversation.com/parler-what-you-need-to-know-about-the-free-speech-twitter-alternative-142268

https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/company/2020/suspension