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sun-citadel · 1 year ago

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The violet sapphic flag

I decided to start work on a sapphic flag, as the original one did not feel inclusive to masculine presenting sapphics. The inclusive sapphic flag also felt too random for me to feel aligned, so I spent time researching a flag design

Excuse any spelling mistakes, English isn't my first language.

Info below. Original thread here. Tiktok version [ without typos ]

1. Why violets ?

The poetry of Sapphos often included talk of violet crowns, with one of her famous poems reading ;

` … Many crowns of violets,

roses and crocuses

…together you set before more

and many scented wreaths

made from blossoms

around your soft throat… `

Violets historically are considered a symbol of sapphic love and the LGBT movement, and are seen in pop culture, such as the cult classic lesbian movie, Bound. A 1926 play also involved a woman sending violets to another, as a potential nod to Sapphos. When the poem was censored / boycotted, women would send violets in support.

To say violets were not a part of LGBT + , and primarily spaphic / lesbian history would be a false statement.

2. Why these colours ?

I colour picked from violets themselves, primarily the African and common violet. One for their inclusion of white, and the other for its range of hues from more blue to magenta. I felt they could align with the various presentations seen within sapphic culture, as I myself ID as transmasculine / presently as a soft butch. There are those who are transfemme, femme, masc, androgynous, etc., and this various spectrum of colours I feel could align with how the community is not just one, but various shade of violet.

I spent time researching LGBT history, and have come up with meanings for these specific colours. They were carefully chosen for both traditional colour meanings, as well as symbolisms that align with the LGBT+ community.

From lavander to pink, both colours have a history of representing the community, and have become symbols reclaimed. From sapphos flowers, to the pink triangle, it is important to remember our history and struggles. Pink triangles itself was used as a symbol for transwomen, as an identifier for example [ as well as gay individuals, but this isn't about them at this time ] , but have been reclaimed to represent lgbt+ rights and our struggles. It is important to never forget those who came before us.

Each colour was picked based off traditional meanings, as well as identifying traits of the community.

3. Colour meanings?

From top to bottom, these colour meanings are ;

1. Femininity, health.

Pink is associated with femininity, so this is for the purely femme presenting individuals, whether trans, nb, or however they ID. It also is the colour of love, and health [ ex , ` everything is rosy ` meaning good ] .

2. Love, compassion.

A lighter shade of pink is usually associated with love, and with love comes compassion and understanding.

3. Youth and age.

From our lives comes the fact that, we as sapphics, lesbians, etc. know that deep down, this is who we truly are. Whether you're young, or come to the realization later, we live life as our authentic self. May we grow old and happy.

4. Limitless potential.

With those who are not afraid to break the gender / sexual binary, and present in ways uncaring of societal norms.

Whether trans, nonbinary, asexual, or uncaring of labels, I hope you find who you truly are.

5. Soft masculinity.

To be soft and masculine is frowned upon in society, but some of us present in ways that we deem just right. It is an oxymoron on many levels to those who do not understand, but we are indifferent and stand tall.

6. Wisdom.

With our history, we can learn and grow, it is important to never forget it. Ever on we march to assure that we are treated as equals.

7. Serenity, masculinity.

A nod to the original flag that brought us here, while also representing the other side of the spectrum for fully masc individuals. Once again, this is for those in the trans umbrella, or comfortable in their gender.

4. Who can use it ?

Sapphics or anyone who falls into that general category.

TERF / SWERFS / anyone not inclusive of the trans community are not permitted.

Please do not use if m - spec lesbian.

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artisplatters · 11 months ago

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originally I was just gonna reblog without adding anything, but the moment I scrolled away I knew I wanted to talk about this

there's a reason we've slowly been forced to censor more and more things we say. Its a means of control, frog in a pot of water. It makes it so we have to jump through flaming hoops and over spike pits to talk about important shit

last year I made a video on tiktok for april 24th, describing some ways you can defend yourself if somebody near you decides to try and celebrate the "holiday". It was flagged within the hour and I couldn't get it approved until a month later, long after it would've been able to help anybody.

videos that I've made talking about the genocide in Palestine seem to evaporate, and videos that were just me using one of those "filters for freedom" garnered remarkably low viewage, even for my account

Now, I didn't save the videos I made because I didn't even think that my (currently) tiny account would get noticed. Big mistake on my end, I'm gonna be saving them in the future, lesson learned. But that goes to show how cracked down these companies are on this shit.

And, like said in the above reblog, its not just stopping at cusswords and the genocides.

Consider predstrogen and her accounts, getting flagged and banned and wiped over and over until she finally gave up, made one last account to say goodbye, only for that account to get sniped as well.

Consider the KOSA bill being pushed. To sum up what it'll do if it passes, it will make it no longer safe to do or try or create basically anything, because we will be forced to use our real names and faces everywhere. They will own our locations, our family's locations, and they will use this to censor and blackmail us even more

Its not gonna stop there. It will not stop until everywhere you look, online and irl, is laid in cold concrete and nametags and grayed out language. They might as well start stamping the QR codes on our foreheads if we let them continue

can't believe we're all adults being forced into the club penguin level of censorship in 2024

#I don't even know if this is a helpful addition I just needed to rant #arti vents #rb #fuck censorship #fuck KOSA #internet freedom #free palestine #free gaza

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pashterlengkap · 8 months ago

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Twitter/X censored the word “cisgender” more than any actual slur this week

X, formerly known as Twitter, has suddenly decided to crack down on individuals who use the term “cisgender,” TechCrunch reports. Users report seeing a popup in response to usage of the term “cis.” It says, “This post contains language that may be considered a slur by X and could be used in a harmful manner in violation of our rules.” In addition, X restricted the post’s visibility in many cases. Related X is the worst social media app for LGBTQ+ people, says new report It scored lower than TikTok, Facebook, YouTube, Threads, and Instagram. This does not seem to consistently be the case, as LGBTQ Nation has been unable to replicate this. Them reported similar findings earlier this week, suggesting that the warning may have ceased in response to pressure. LGBTQ+ news you can rely on Keep track of the ongoing battle against bias and for equality with our newsletter. Subscribe to our Newsletter today This type of enforcement has not been seen for racist, antisemitic, or anti-LGBTQ+ slurs. “[X owner] Elon Musk has been engaging in this disingenuous and inherently bigoted effort to redefine this term for nearly a year,” a representative for GLAAD said in a statement. “The list of his hate-driven rhetoric and behavior is too long to even list.” The spokesperson continued, saying that the warning seemed to be “another of Musk’s endless exercises in catering to his new right-wing extremist user base of X — one more coded, but very clear, signal from the company that transgender people are not welcome on the platform.” Many users still continued to post the terms “cis” and “cisgender,” just censored in different ways. well if we can't say c1sgender on here anymore we'll just have to come up with an actual slur for you all— lauren (@Very__Regular) May 21, 2024 Musk stated last June that he considers “cisgender” a slur and will ban it from Twitter. He has opposed using the term “cisgender” since December 2022, when he publicly criticized it in an interview, saying he was not cisgender. He doubled down after users called him “cissy” and “cis” shortly after. Cisgender was coined in 1994 by a cisgender woman. It was constructed from the prefix “cis-” in Latin, which means “on the same side,” or the opposite of “trans-.” It is not considered a slur by any civil rights organization. Musk has previously supported anti-LGBTQ+ influencers on the site and has opposed protections for LGBTQ+ individuals, threatening to repeal anti-discrimination policies after individuals like Chaya Raichik of Libs of TikTok have criticized them. The site has previously featured an advertisement that called for the death of gay people. In GLAAD’s recent report on social media safety, X scored the lowest out of any other social media site measured. This was due to its lack of policies that protect LGBTQ+ individuals, often disproportionately targeting the LGBTQ+ community in enforcement. http://dlvr.it/T7MFty

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vintage-tech · 2 years ago

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oh! regarding the k!!! / kill thing - tiktok's algorithms suppress or even remove your videos if you use certain language, so that's the reason users will work around it by censoring in that funny manner. it's not that they're afraid of the words, just annoyed by tiktok's censoring through removal of videos that contains unfiltered words that "promote" violence or cursing. it's absolute horseshit, but it's what the platform is like.

obv no need to respond, just wanted to answer in case there was confusion. we would like nothing more than to curse or use everyday language on there, trust me.

I believe you, and am aware there are some server-based bullshit issues. I'm just snarking on how inane it is. I mean, you can watch an Infographics video about WW2 and they smudge out very relevant words (what do you do in a war beside KILL?) as well as obnoxious and totally unnecessary alterations (taking the 'ass' out of Classroom?!).

I'm against the pussification of online media; reminds me of George Carlin's bit about how you should replace 'fuck' for the word 'kill' in old movies since (to the contrary!) we seem to favor violence over sex in our media. It's no longer about protecting the kids from the words adults say when they drop something heavy on their foot or are alone in the bedroom. It's about softsoaping and sterilizing reality in a way that even ultra-Puritans would be surprised by.

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olderthannetfic · 3 years ago

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wow that's a lot fewer slurs-in-tags than I expected. I predicted there'd be at least a few hundred with how people were talking about it. I'm also surprised most of the ones with a negative context were sexuality-based. Maybe all the slur-users are from tiktok and censoring their harassment.

This gets pretty well into how banning language can often screw people over who use it as a self-descriptor or in a more general way. I mean, I don't want queer to be banned from the tags as a slur, y'know? I like calling characters queer because I am queer. And what about dyke? Is freak a slur? And don't think I don't notice how cunt or bitch aren't ever warned for even though there's a argument about them being gendered slurs in certain contexts. Not to mention the effect of adjectives, stick filthy in front of a ton of totally benign nouns for a marginalized group and it's pretty bad.

I dunno how'd we'd ban even the unambiguous slurs without getting rid of warnings for said slurs or giving people the ability to filter out works that do use those tags (which are probably just as slur-filled). And aren't slurs used in a specifically harassing context already against ao3's TOS? urhg it's complicated because I don't want to say there isn't a problem, but it feels more like a community issue than a structural one. Harassment is already banned, block/mute is on its way, banning specific words from tags won't work and cripple our ability to warn/filter for those slurs (not to mention what qualifies as a slur can be pretty ambiguous). People are the problem, either ignorant, where education is the answer and it's probably too subtle to properly regulate, or malicious, which intentional malice is very creative at circumventing rules like bans on words.

Of course there's also a possibility that with all the attention being given to it, the trolls will sense weakness and flood the tags with slurs.

And with regards to 'cunt', how do we handle it being really fairly extreme in US English but not a big deal to other native speakers? (Personally, I like it. 'Pussy' is infantilizing, unhot drivel or a comedic mass noun.)

I'm not surprised there are few. The racism--actual racism--on AO3 has always been primarily in the form of indifference.

People often don't find ethnic minority characters sexually attractive, so they don't ship them or they occasionally write them as the emotional support boyfriend propping up the much more author-beloved other person. It's particularly stark when it comes to dark-skinned characters and characters seen as black in the US. Notice, I don't say this is primarily about "white" and "nonwhite" because fandom has zero problems being extremely horny for ethnic majority characters in their own country's media if that media is fantasy dramas from China or anime from Japan or something. This isn't just because of colorism (though that doesn't help). It's also about the subtleties of how media presents A Default Hero vs. An Othered Sidekick.

It's hard to fight indifference.

Each fic writer is just doing what they enjoy and probably hasn't done anything wrong individually. But the sum total of their lack of interest adds up to an AO3 that tells fans what the community values and does not value. I genuinely believe the sum total of that is alienating. People are being honest about how it affects them. But it's also hard to know how to combat that situation or those feelings because there isn't a clear bad guy who can be yelled at and told to shape up.

Many of the fights about "bad" content on AO3 really boil down to there not being enough "good" content or the "good" content getting buried while the "bad" content has eighty bajillion kudos. Slurs in tags are mostly a red herring.

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albreehyde · 5 years ago

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You know what the coronavirus pandemic hasn't stopped? The Hong Kong protests.

In fact, the protests have ramped up bc the CCP has passed on today, May 28th 2020 (HKT), the death sentence for Hong Kong, i.e. the most sinister plan to take away Hongkongers’ freedoms while we're all busy dealing with the coronavirus. Remember the now-withdrawn extradition law amendment bill (ELAB) that sparked the anti-ELAB protests last year? This new plan not only does that, but it even unleashes a whole new range of assault power.

No, the CCP isn't gonna crack down on Hongkongers with visible violence. They've learnt from the disastrous PR management of the June 4th / Tiananmen Massacre. Also, they need a better excuse for interfering in Hong Kong, 1 of the largest international financial centres and the gateway for the CCP to gain foreign currency and break into global financial markets.

Instead, the CCP’s plan is to force a "national security law" in Hong Kong like what they've been using in mainland China, bypassing Hong Kong’s legislature. The CCP leadership has already passed this law today, May 28th (HKT) and can sign it into effect as soon as early June.

We don’t know how much longer we can continue accessing international communication sites, which are banned in mainland China but freely accessible in Hong Kong, especially Google, WhatsApp, Tumblr, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube and Facebook. If we suddenly go silent about our fight for democracy, you can assume the censorship resulting from the "national security law" has taken effect.

Who’s gonna define that "national security law"? Most likely the CCP. They have their own legal system, instead of the common law system that HK uses based on the UK system. The CCP has an abominable track record of arbitrarily defining the law to persecute dissidents, violating human rights in the process. They have various means of silencing dissidents even if they manage to escape China. Well known dissidents include:

LIU Xiaobo, a Nobel Peace Prize Laureate.

HUANG Qi and TAN Zuoren, who advocated for an investigation into corruption in school construction following the 2008 Sichuan earthquake.

LI Wangyang, who took part in Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, tortured while in jail for 22 years and even still kept under surveillance after being released from prison.

WANG Quanzhang, a human rights lawyer who defends political activists and victims of police torture.

LEE Ming-che, a Taiwanese rights activist who promotes human rights and democracy online.

HU Jia, who posted articles on social issues which criticises the CCP.

WANG Yi (pen name: WANG Shuya), a Christian pastor who founded and led one of the well known underground churches in mainland China.

Tashi WANGCHUK, a Tibetan language education activist.

Currently, Hong Kong is the only city among all technically CCP-ruled regions where your freedoms and human rights are protected in practice (though fast eroding) with judicial independence (also starting to skew) following international law.

After the "national security law" passes, Hongkongers will lose all our fundamental freedoms and rights, including but not limited to:

Freedom of expression.

The right to peaceful assembly.

Freedom of the press.

Freedom of thought.

Rights against arbitrary arrest, detention or exile.

The right against torture; and even,

The right to life, liberty and security of person.

Our fight against the CCP will become illegal, since we'll no longer be able to monitor and speak out against the CCP and CCP-backed HK government. Our very existence as Hongkongers could be seen as a rebellion. Hong Kong today, the world tomorrow.

Everyone, no matter your nationality, will no longer be safe from the CCP. The CCP threatens international law. The proposed law plans to allow CCP agents to work in Hong Kong. Hong Kong is one of the largest international travel hubs. Whoever lives in, or simply passing through Hong Kong, could be kidnapped and transported to mainland China if the CCP thinks you’re a threat. Does that sound familiar? Yeah, bc that’s the exact potential loophole we criticised during the anti-ELAB protests. In fact, this kind of abduction already happened in 2015, in the Causeway Bay Books disappearances which include LAM Wing-kee and GUI Minhai. The booksellers were persecuted for selling books on politics, human rights, criticism of the CCP leadership, and any subject that the CCP leadership didn’t like.

After the "national security law" passes, we'll no longer have the freedom to raise the alarm to the world about new epidemics first popping up in mainland China, like the coronavirus now and SARS in 2003 (more from the WHO archive). Fun fact: Hongkongers have been managing the coronavirus relatively well precisely bc we don't trust the CCP-backed HK gov and we’ve been taking preventive measures way before it advises us to, based on previous experience with SARS.

We’ll no longer have the right to be assumed innocent until proven guilty in the court, not even the right to fair trial and equality under the law, since HK will no longer have an independent judicial system under the separation of powers. Hong Kong is run on the rule of law but the CCP runs on the rule by law, and the CCP has increasingly pressured HK’s judges. Foreign judges will be banned from national security cases, likely bc they are more likely to uphold the rule of law and independent judiciary.

We'll no longer have the freedom to talk about the truth. Instead, we’ll be forced to censor ourselves and substitute the truth with CCP approved propaganda. The CCP knows who controls the truth controls society. The coronavirus? “No, it's spread to China by the US armed forces. It's a part of their plan to frame the CCP.” Banning TikTok and Huawei? “They don't cause security or privacy issues. There's no censorship on the platforms provided through these technologies. The ‘accusations’ are a part of an international plan to frame the CCP.” (Notice a pattern here?) Just 3 days ago (May 25, 2020), the Hong Kong exam board, which is independent from the Education Bureau, was forced to cancel a public exam question about Japan’s roles in the development of China from 1900 up to WWII bc it “hurts Chinese people’s” (aka CCP’s) “esteem and feelings”.

We'll no longer have the freedom to connect with the international community (Joshua WONG, Hong Kong activist) and different cultures with open minds, as the CCP looks down on the values and impacts of non-CCP-approved-Chinese cultures. It has an insatiable need to dominate the world through homogeneity, seizing natural resources, and economic expansion. Just look at how the CCP treats Uyghurs and Tibetans. Read about the Belt and Road Initiative especially in Africa - it's practically CCP colonialism. Then look at how the CCP, by building dams in upstream Mekong River, has caused a drought in Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam. The CCP keeps claiming without proof that Hongkongers who want democracy are a minority (Spoiler: We aren't. At least 2 million residents out of 7.5 million, i.e. over 1 in 4 residents, marched for democracy on June 16, 2019. Remember?) are influenced by Western chaos agents, bc the CCP can't afford citizens thinking critically, criticizing and holding them accountable for their actions. Case in point: the June 4th / Tiananmen Massacre. The CCP-backed HK gov has extended the ban on social gatherings until (you guessed it) June 4th, which is rumoured to stop people from holding vigils, even though daily new coronavirus cases are in single digits and schools are reopening a week before.

We'll no longer have the freedom to maintain our identity of being Hongkongers, since according to CCP logic, being local / Hongkongers means identifying against CCP-controlled China → challenging and rebelling against the CCP → directly threatening CCP’s authority → enemy of CCP. The most conspicuous symbols? The Hong Kong anthem, Glory to Hong Kong. And Cantonese, the native language of over 90% of Hongkongers. A similar case has already happened with Tibetan culture and language: Tashi WANGCHUK, a Tibetan language education activist, was persecuted in 2018 simply for advocating to preserve his own heritage.

(Side note: If you ask if somebody speaks Chinese, it's like asking if they speak Asian or European. “Chinese” encompasses a group of languages which include Cantonese, Taiwanese and Mandarin, which currently many people refer to as “Chinese”. If you start talking in mainland-Chinese accented Mandarin to Hongkongers without asking, you'll get responses ranging from confused / pained replies in most likely English, often Cantonese, or rarely, Mandarin; the side eye; the silent treatment; or even a glare. We’re far more welcoming if you speak Taiwanese-accented Mandarin though.)

Hongkongers will keep fighting for our rights, and we need reinforced international support in our most urgent battle. So what can you do to stand with us?

1. Chris PATTEN, the last governor of Hong Kong under British rule, has led a joint statement to protest against the CCP’s move to force the "national security law" in Hong Kong. As of writing on May 28th, the day of passing the law, the joint statement's been co-signed by over 618 political representatives and academics from 33 countries, including the UK, the US, the EU, Canada, Australia, Russia and the rest of Asia. Please write to encourage your local policymaker to cosign the letter (template linked in-text).

2. Sign petitions that support our fight for freedom, e.g. international sanctions against the CCP, the CCP-backed Hong Kong government, and the Hong Kong Police Force.

3. Continue making posts in support of Hongkongers on your regular social media sites, esp Twitter, where there's a higher chance of politicians seeing your posts.

Yeah, like Matan EVENOFF, who tricked the NBA dance cam into streaming support for Hong Kong.

4. Report content spreading pro-CCP propaganda about the Hong Kong democracy movement; report both the comment / post and the account. Some common insults pro-CCP trolls use: “cockr**ch” (dehumanizing Hong Kong protestors); “sb” (initials of “d**chebag” in Mandarin); “nmsl” (initials of “Your mum is dead” in Mandarin); “biss” (a contraction of “must d*e” in Mandarin); and insinuating in any way that anyone in support of the protests is a “servant” or a “pet” of foreign politicians. People have mentioned that on Twitter, reports on pro-CCP troll content are more thoroughly followed up on and the content more likely to be removed. I've found that on Instagram, reporting as spam has a higher removal rate than reporting to other relevant categories.

5. Stay updated with the situation on HK by following independent and/or pro-democracy journalists in HK:

Hong Kong Free Press (In English. Official website / Twitter @hongkongfp / Instagram @hongkongfp / Youtube @hongkongfp / Facebook @hongkongfp)

The Stand News (Mostly in Chinese, but you don’t need to know Chinese to understand their infographics. Official website / Twitter @standnewshk / Instagram @thestandnews / Youtube @standnewshk / Facebook @standnewshk)

RTHK News (In both English and Chinese news; publicly funded. As of May 28th 2020, it has still maintained objective reporting, but this could change for the worse quickly bc the CCP-backed HK government has plans to interfere in its editorial independence. Official website / Twitter @rthk_enews / Facebook @RTHKEnglishNews)

Guardians of Hong Kong / Be Water Hong Kong (a volunteer page that translates news from Chinese to English; it updates quickly. Official website / Twitter @BeWaterHKG / Instagram @guardiansofhk / Facebook @BeWaterHongKong)

No matter what ultimately happens to Hongkongers, you're helping us make history. And even if Hongkongers still lose in the end, promise us that you'll continue fighting for us.

Remember us for centuries.

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azurowle · 4 years ago

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@itsjustwokehomophobia Transcribing this post based off of our conversation this morning where you requested an image ID. This is my first time doing this, so my apologies if it’s not the greatest.

(@itsthevioletqueen if you would like me to add this transcription to your post let me know, and I apologize for accidentally posting it earlier - I’m not used to using Tumblr on my desktop. If you don;t want me to that’s fine.)

I decided to censor any slurs I found. I was initially not going to, because (a) this was the words of the 4channers, not me, and (b) I think ultimately censoring them would ruin the impact of what this is saying for itsjustwokehomophobia, but honestly, I really think that if the parts where they’re strategizing how to spread this don’t utterly disgust you, then the slurs sure as fuck aren’t.

Nevertheless, HUGE HONKIN’ TRIGGER WARNING FOR TRANSPHOBIA, HOMOPHOBIA, ANTI-SEMITISM, RACISM, AND FASCIST LANGUAGE UNDER THE CUT. IT’S 4CHAN, FOLKS, YOU KNOW HOW THIS GOES.

[Image ID: A series of five screenshots. The first is a screenshot of Twitter user @bluemoth5, sharing a series of screenshots from 4chan.

bluemoth5: Anybody that thinks #superstraight is a real thing, fuck off.

itsthevioletqueen: 4chan is at it fucking again

itsthevioletqueen: tw: transphobia and slurs v

The v points down to a “Read More” link.

Below the Read More are four screenshots taken from 4chan, from a thread titled “/SS/ super straight general.” The four screenshots depict a conversation started by an anonymous user with the ID “bjG0EDki.” The thread is as follows, using the anon IDs to differentiate who’s speaking:

bjG0EDki: >Making this thread before the other one hits the bump limit GOALS >drive a wedge between tr*nnies and other f*g groups >Redpill zoomers >Use the left’s tactics against themselves, call them bigots for not accepting super straights >Shitpost on social media >Hit mainstream status

WHAT THE FUCK IA HAPPENING

>zoomer on tiktok makes a new sexuality called “super straight” meaning one is only attracted to the biological sex, meaning no trannies >Countering the tranny logic that tr**ns are “real women

WHAT DO I DO

>spam this shit all over, make memes, retweet SS agents on twitter, post on every site imaginable

(The post contains a picture of an SS flag, with half of it black and half of it orange. The orange “S” is on the black background, and the black “S” is on the orange background.)

bjG0Eki: Kiwifarms already found out about this, contribute there too (URL not included to discourage others from going there)

Gdf7IUBH: bump

User whose ID is unknown: >hate tr*nnies for stealing their thunder. I think >Hitching the T wagon to the LGB train, and demanding it runs through equality station and all the way to nonceville. cover it better, but I get the gist

5nvQLkOk: Just spitballing my earlier concept

(The picture includes a half-black, half-orange flag with a stylized “S” that is half-orange, half-black.)

0bAuFtXq: DON’T FUCKING USE THE SS SYMBOLS JESUS CHRIST YOU STUPID N*****S THIS WILL STOP THE MOVEMENT SO FUCKING HARD STOP IT YOU ABSOLUTE R*TARDS USE SAFER AND F*GGOT-IER SYMBOLISM TO GET MORE AND DON’T FUCKING BE R**ARDED ACT HOW THEY ACT

User whose ID is unknown: >THIS WILL STOP THE MOVEMENT SO FUCKING HARD That’s why (((they))) are using it in the first place, goy

nJSj8C7f: (next to a simple half-black, half-orange flag) Just stick with this. We don’t need any stupid designs. It’s fine the way it is. This goes for everyone too. Quit it with the different variations and the cringe Nazi shit. If you want this to work, just leave it how it is.

QNaMStPl: don’t make it so easy, p*ta

a1VnYjBN: You fucking r**arded cockboy. You are doing this on purpose to undermine the super straight movement. Giving the tr*nnies ammunition they can use to make it seem like it is a nazi thing. They probably already have screen shots of this up on Twitter.

User whose ID is unknown: This is pretty gay equivalent of having a flag for believing in gravity, makes you look insecure.

WLTO0k0H: I know everyone’s desperate to do muh OC but shopping in the fashy symbols is r**arded you will stop this stone fucking dead r**ards saying media will call it a hate symbol anyway, yes, but AFTER it’s spread you radicalise people by not showing them radical material, but having them agree with reasonable material that is then revealed to be radical

S6ehmVhU: How do tr*nnies feel about bisexuals?

+5uv8B/s: Because you r**ards have already posted it on Twitter, poisoning the well. Any good points that may have been made by using tr*nny rhetoric against them is rendered moot because it’s all just “evil nazis behond (sp) the movement. Are you actually r**arded?

3hYo/HG3: didn’t realize that someone else already made a new thread

end ID]

#tw homophobia #tw transphobia #tw racism #tw antisemitism #tw fascism #tw slurs

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mostlysignssomeportents · 5 years ago

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Pluralistic: 16 Mar 2020 (Trump wants a US-only vaccine, Covid at Home, tips for laid-off techies, Tiktok's secret moderation guidelines, Corona Bar Mitzvah, Shmoocon 2020 videos)

Today's links

Covid At Home: A guide for isolation, illness and recovery

Trump wants a US-only vaccine: Reality has a well-known globalist/collectivist bias.

Folding@Home to beat covid: 23 distcomp projects to give your CPU to.

Italian hospitals fix their ventilators with 3D printed parts: Fablabs to the rescue.

How to prepare for coming layoffs: A guide for techies junior, senior and prickly.

Leaked Tiktok moderation guidelines are a censoring mess: No poors or ugly people welcome.

Canceled Bar Mitzvah is still a mitzvah: Today I am a mensch.

Shmoocon 2020 videos online: Hours of entertainment and infosec funnies.

This day in history:

Colophon: Recent publications, current writing projects, upcoming appearances, current reading

Covid At Home (permalink)

Dutch hacker and XS4ALL cofounder Rop Gonggrijp and artist Vera Wilde have produced Covid At Home, an open-access guide to staying healthy, treating illness, and general pandemic preparedness.

https://covid-at-home.info/ It's an excellent, sober, accessible guide, produced with help from medical professionals.

They're seeking help to translate it into other languages as well. German edition coming next.

Trump wants a US-only vaccine (permalink)

The Trump administration has offered "large sums" to a German manufacturer for US-only access to a potential covid-19 vaccine

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/mar/15/trump-offers-large-sums-for-exclusive-access-to-coronavirus-vaccine

According to Die Welt, Curevac has made progress on the vaccine, and the Trump admin is seeking access "but for the US only."

The company's recently departed CEO, Daniel Menichella, is a US citizen who recently visited the White House.

The Trump administration's failure to understand our shared collective microbial destiny is emblematic. Trump epitomizes the neoliberal sociopathy of "enlightened self-interest" and "meritocracy" and the belief that "there is no such thing as society." It's a pathology as dangerous as any virus, and could yet kill us all. Immunizing America against coronavirus only works if

The vaccine is perfect (they never are) and

The US blocks all entry into the country by unvaccinated people (which it cannot do).

Instead of figuring out how to orient 100% of US capacity to producing enough vaccine to eliminate the virus worldwide, Trump is engaged in isolationist, superstitious fantasies.

https://twitter.com/doctorow/status/1238180609899429889

Within hours, Curvac had told Trump to go fuck himself and announced that any vaccine they produce will be available worldwide.

https://twitter.com/SWRAktuellBW/status/1239225432739844097

Folding@Home to beat covid (permalink)

Since the year 2000 (!), Folding@Home has been harnessing the power of idle personal computers to do scientific work on protein folding, using donated cycles to improve science. Now they're running 23 (!!) projects to help improve our scientific understanding of covid-19.

"We're simulating the dynamics of COVID-19 proteins to hunt for new therapeutic opportunities."

They've already used this to locate sites in the Ebola protein that can be targeted by therapeutics.

https://foldingathome.org/2020/03/15/coronavirus-what-were-doing-and-how-you-can-help-in-simple-terms/

Download your Folding@Home client here (Mac/Win/Lin)

https://foldingathome.org/start-folding/

Then choose your simulation from here. Be prepared to wait for your computer to be given work – they're overwhelmed with cycles at the moment.

https://apps.foldingathome.org/psummary

Italian hospitals fix their ventilators with 3D printed parts (permalink)

A Brescia hospital urgenty needed valves for their ventilators. A journalist contacted the local Fablab, who contacted a local 3D printing expert who came to the hospital, redesigned the part, and printed a replacement on the spot.

https://www.3dprintingmedia.network/covid-19-3d-printed-valve-for-reanimation-device/

Within a day, 10 patients were breathing with respirators incorporating 3D printed parts.

How to prepare for coming layoffs (permalink)

It's not outlandish to prepare for a recession (and hence layoffs) as a result of Covid-19. And while techies have a robust labor-market relative to other sectors, tech-workers are not immune from mass layoffs when their employers contract sharply or shut down altogether.

Jacob Kaplan-Moss has been here before and has some tips for techies to prepare for unemployment. He points out that the highest layoff risk comes to juniors (unprotected and easy to jettison), seniors (highest paid), and prickly people (politically easier to lay off) and underperformers (obvs).

https://jacobian.org/2020/mar/13/layoffs-are-coming/

How do you prep for layoffs? First, try to have 1 year's savings in the bank (advice from the 2000 dotcom crash). You probably can't do this, but start saving now. Cancel all nonessential expenses.

Next, update your resume. When layoffs start cascading, being ready to start applying for jobs can give you a head-start over your competition.

Kaplan-Moss suggests setting aside an hour every quarter to update your CV – this is good advice generally, as you never know when someone will ask for your resume (periodically I have to produce one for a visa or a grant, for example).

Practice interviews, using online resources, like this one:

https://eng-hiring.18f.gov/

In addition, contact your "professional network" and start feeling them out;Tb and brush up on your tech skills.

Leaked Tiktok moderation guidelines are a censoring mess (permalink)

There's a lot going on in The Intercept's deep dive into two leaked set of moderation guidelines from Bytedance, parent company of Tiktok, ably reported (as ever) by Sam Biddle.

https://theintercept.com/2020/03/16/tiktok-app-moderators-users-discrimination/

First is a confirmaton of Tiktok's policy of telling moderators to downrank videos from unattractive, fat, old or poor people, and signs of poverty. Homes need to have "no obvious slummy charactor" (sic), without a "crack on the wall" or "old and disreputable decorations."

The reasoning is clear "This kind of environment is not that suitable for new users for being less fancy and appealing" (overweight, poor, old or unattractive users lower the tone). Tiktok spox Josh Gartner said these were to prevent bullying, (but they don't mention bullying).

The leaks are pretty frank about their ableism and lookism, banning "low quality" traits including "abnormal body shape," "ugly facial looks," dwarfism, "obvious beer belly," "too many wrinkles," and "eye disorders."

They also ban "slums, rural fields" and "dilapidated housing."

The flipside of this is that Tiktok mods secretly contacting influencers to clue them in on secret moderation criteria that might get them downranked or banned, creating a group of insiders who are protected from the arbitrary, shadow regulation regime other Tiktokers never see.

That shadow regime is documented in a second set of leaks, which details the subjects and views that can get you kicked, suspended or downranked from the platform. Anything that embarrasses or upsets China is obviously out, like Falun Gong or Tiananmen.

Beyond that, livestreams of encounters with cops, videos that criticize the military, or criticism Tiktok itself are all lifetime bannable offenses – while racism and hate speech get you a one-month suspension.

Also revealed: Tiktok has a bunch of fake accounts maintained by its own staff, who gank influencer videos from Instagram that look classy and fun, as a way of shifting the content mix on the platform.

But even as these accounts were focusing on tags like "#BeachGirl," actual Tiktok users who posted pictures of themselves in swimwear faced temporary or permanent bans.

(You can get a permanent ban for wearing a garment that reveals "outline of female nipples").

There's also a "voice vulgarity" category of guidelines, including bans for "Singing or playing music pornography contents, sexual cues, etc," or "discussing the topic of sexual reproduction." You can also get banned for flipping the bird – but only if you do it more than twice.

Tiktok's appeal is that they use secret sauce to elevate accounts with few followers and share them with millions of viewers. The legend is that this is a way to rocket the humble but meretricious to fame, but the leaks reveal that no olds, fats, or poors need apply.

Canceled Bar Mitzvah is still a mitzvah (permalink)

A heartwarming story of "Covered Dish" behavior in the time of coronavirus! "Friends canceled their son's Bar Mitzvah this weekend but decided to keep the contract with their caterer, a tiny Hmong-owned business. They delivered the food to friends in quarantine & sent pans home with others."

https://twitter.com/mrotzie/status/1239249970458484736

(Image: Eli, CC BY)

Shmoocon 2020 videos online (permalink)

It's been years since I last attended a Shmoocon, but holy moly, is it ever a great annual infosec con. They've just put the 2020 videos online, which affords you plenty of viewing for your lockdown pleasure.

You might have already heard about Samantha Mosely's presentation about how she and her teen friends defeat Instagram's privacy invasions:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WTCBEimhXMM

Here's some gnarly stuff: securing satellites and space-base comms, presented by three researchers styling themselves Yakko, Wakko and Dot (swoon!).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WR_H9_pnyDc

Feed your inner technothriller writer with this one, on "anti-forensics" ("the practice of modifying or removing data so that others cannot find it later during an investigation").

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eSmsiSvvAQs

How NGOs – and you at home – can use "open source intelligence" to help support human rights and survivors of human rights abuses.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tRzGiR4DS7w

A Choose-Your-Own-Adventure guide to surviving ransomware attacks, using data gleaned from real attacks and recoveries.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NkNFUQrg_GA

Analyzing the effects of 200 data-breaches on public companies' share prices (shareholder capitalism won't save us from overcollection, overretention and bad security).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PdxiwpACwYc

This day in history (permalink)

#15yrsago Apple steals iTunes customers' paid-for rights to stream https://web.archive.org/web/20050405225837/http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=21866

#15yrago My talk from ETECH: All Complex Ecosystems Have Parasites https://craphound.com/complexecosystems.txt

#15yrsago ETECH Notes: Folksonomy, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Mess (Schachter, Wales, Shirky and Butterfield) https://craphound.com/etech2005-folksonomy.txt

#15yrsago ETECH Notes: Feral Robotics and Some Other Quacking, Shaking, Bubbling Robots (Natalie Jeremijenko) https://craphound.com/etech05-feral.txt

#10yrsago Downloadable 3D cover for MAKERS is now also an article of commerce https://www.shapeways.com/product/Z55YYHW5P/cory-doctorow-makers-cover-3d-print

Colophon (permalink)

Today's top sources: Geoff MacDougall (https://twitter.com/taliesan), Bleeping Computer (https://www.bleepingcomputer.com), Javier Candiera (https://twitter.com/candeira), Four Short Links (https://www.oreilly.com/feed/four-short-links), Naked Capitalism (https://nakedcapitalism.com/).

Currently writing: I've just finished rewrites on a short story, "The Canadian Miracle," for MIT Tech Review. It's a story set in the world of my next novel, "The Lost Cause," a post-GND novel about truth and reconciliation. I've also just completed "Baby Twitter," a piece of design fiction also set in The Lost Cause's prehistory, for a British think-tank. I'm getting geared up to start work on the novel next.

Currently reading: Just started Lauren Beukes's forthcoming Afterland: it's Y the Last Man plus plus, and two chapters in, it's amazeballs. Last month, I finished Andrea Bernstein's "American Oligarchs"; it's a magnificent history of the Kushner and Trump families, showing how they cheated, stole and lied their way into power. I'm getting really into Anna Weiner's memoir about tech, "Uncanny Valley." I just loaded Matt Stoller's "Goliath" onto my underwater MP3 player and I'm listening to it as I swim laps.

Latest podcast: When Sysadmins Ruled the Earth https://craphound.com/podcast/2020/03/13/when-sysadmins-ruled-the-earth-2/

Upcoming books: "Poesy the Monster Slayer" (Jul 2020), a picture book about monsters, bedtime, gender, and kicking ass. Pre-order here: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781626723627?utm_source=socialmedia&utm_medium=socialpost&utm_term=na-poesycorypreorder&utm_content=na-preorder-buynow&utm_campaign=9781626723627

(we're having a launch for it in Burbank on July 11 at Dark Delicacies and you can get me AND Poesy to sign it and Dark Del will ship it to the monster kids in your life in time for the release date).

"Attack Surface": The third Little Brother book, Oct 20, 2020. https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250757531

"Little Brother/Homeland": A reissue omnibus edition with a new introduction by Edward Snowden: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250774583

#pluralistic

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frontallloog · 6 years ago

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I don’t think I could survive Japan because:

When it is 1PM there it is 11PM in Texas and I will be desperately tired in the afternoon and evening

I usually have a lot of time to myself but in Japan you have to get places quickly

I’m used to heat, but it’s so crowded in Japan and it heats up the air so much and there isn’t even some wind that helps

It’s. So. Small!!! My house could hold 7 small Japanese apartments!

I have to restrain being loud... My voice is naturally loud and since you must respect silence over in Japan I’m gonna die

WHY IS EVERYONE SO FASHIONABLE??????? WHY ARE YOU JUST WEARING A SHIRT MA’AM???? YOU LOOK CUTE BUT WHERE IS YO PANTS???????? IS MY HOODIE AND JEANS NOT ENOUGH?? DO I NEED TO LEARN FASHION BECAUSE MULTIPLYING SOMETHING BY 0 WILL STILL BE 0

I can’t talk to strangers anymore when in line or on the subway.... I just wanna chat (T_T)

Some who are actually bold enough will test their English out on me and... I remember this old man, he spoke English but it was so broken.... Luckily I’m used to hearing broken English so it wasn’t too much. I applaud the man for knowing English tho, cheers to you old man I’ll never meet again. There were also some school girls. They were in middle school I think, the way they pronounced their English was so cute and that’s how I found out I was not straight They pronounced enemy like, “Ee-nee-me” And it was just... ARGH SO CUTEEEE I do agree with them that English does suck, why do we even have homophones... We’re the only language that has spelling bees! Just because we can’t pronouce our words like how they’re spelled!

There will now actually be people who will judge me for wearing snowflake pajamas to the convience store to buy a late night snack

Where is my water... I’m sorry Mrs. Waiter but I’m just thirsty

WHAT WILL HAPPEN TO MY CROSSBOW???!!!?!?!? I WANNA KEEP IT!! AND WHAT WILL HAPPEN TO THE KNIFES AND DRILLS THAT MY BROTHER OWNS TO MOD NERF GUNS!!!?!?? I WONT BE ABLE TO BUY A GUN FROM WALMART ANYMORE????

Where are my corn pits when I need them

No one will understand my vine and tiktok references....

I’m scared to be compared to other Japanese girls because they all look so cuteeeeee and I’m just what am I

Please don’t take my depressive humor seriously it’s the easiest way to channel it

WHY DO JAPANESE PEOPLE BELIEVE THE USA MADE JUSTIN BIEBER HE- SHE’S CANADIAN

How will I control my swearing

“Fuck.” “OH SHIET” “Well ya better bippity boppity back the fuck up” “Well diddily darn doo ain’t that just FUCKING WONDERFUL”

I am scared if they find me weird because I say things like, “Your toes, hand them over. You lost privilege.” Or, “You gotta censor h*ck because it’s a fucking bad word.”

Lord save me from them weird ass commercials (an alien cow???? really??? all for some milk??)

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96thdayofrage · 4 years ago

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In the wake of the dramatic storming of the Capitol last week, a host of big media companies, including Facebook, Reddit, Pinterest, Twitch, YouTube, Snapchat, Instagram and TikTok, have all taken measures against Donald Trump. Making the most headlines, however, was the decision of the president’s favorite medium, Twitter (1/8/21), to permanently suspend him “due to the risk of further incitement of violence.”

It’s difficult to argue that Trump did not repeatedly violate Twitter‘s rules against “threaten[ing] violence” and “glorification of violence,” justifying his ban. But we urgently need to rethink the power of these social media behemoths, because there are plenty of other examples where their enforcement of their rules has been arbitrary and non-transparent.

Whether one saw the assault on the halls of Congress as a coup attempt (e.g., Atlantic, 1/6/21; Buzzfeed News, 1/6/21; Guardian, 1/6/21), a “riot” (MSNBC, 1/10/21; Wall Street Journal, 1/12/21) or “protests” (Fox News, 1/7/21, 1/8/21), there is no doubt that Trump did incite the crowd to invade the seat of government. Instructing his followers to “fight like hell” to stop a “stolen election,” he insisted: “You’ll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength, and you have to be strong.”

The media reaction to the social media ban was varied. Writing in tech publication ZDNet (1/7/21), Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols supported the decision. “The right to free speech doesn’t give you the right to right to shout fraud in a fractured country,” he said. “Twitter should have suspended Trump’s account years ago,” wrote Sarah Manavis in the New Statesman (1/7/21):

For years the president has been allowed to tweet anything he wants, with deadly consequences…. The case for kicking one of its highest-profile users off the platform is self-evident.

Meanwhile, Chris Stevenson in the London Independent (1/11/21) argued that privately owned websites have every right to remove their services from users.

Jessica J. González, co-CEO of the media advocacy group Free Press (1/9/21) and co-founder of the anti-hate speech Change the Terms coalition, hailed the ban as a victory for media activism:

Twitter’s decision to permanently suspend Donald Trump is a victory for racial-justice advocates who have long condemned his continued abuse of the platform.

From the launch of his presidential campaign when he defamed Mexicans as rapists, criminals and drug dealers, to the desperate last gasps of his presidency as he has egged on white supremacists to commit violence and insurrection, Trump had used his Twitter account to incite violence, lie about the election outcome, encourage racists and spread conspiracy theories. He did not deserve a platform on Twitter, or on any other social or traditional media.

Others were not so heartened by the news. Writing in Politico (1/10/21), European Union official Thierry Breton worried:

The fact that a CEO can pull the plug on POTUS’s loudspeaker without any checks and balances is perplexing. It is not only confirmation of the power of these platforms, but it also displays deep weaknesses in the way our society is organized in the digital space.

National leaders like German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador also characterized the move as a blow against free speech. New York Times columnist Michelle Goldberg (1/11/21) was in the middle, stating that tech giants were right to ban Trump, but worried about the “scary power” they were amassing.

Perhaps the most histrionic reaction came from Donald Trump Jr., who tweeted (1/9/21):

The world is laughing at America & Mao, Lenin, & Stalin are smiling. Big tech is able to censor the President? Free speech is dead & controlled by leftist overlords.

In reality, of course, actual, self-described leftist and Communist figures are routinely purged from the site. Twitter shut down virtually the entire Cuban state media apparatus in 2019, removed tens of thousands of accounts it claims were linked to the Chinese Communist Party, and has suspended Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro’s account multiple times without explanation. These moves failed to elicit handwringing condemnations and essays on the nature of free speech, however.

With the power that he wields as president, Trump is undoubtedly the most belligerent user in Twitter history, using the platform to threaten genocide against Iran and threaten North Korea with “total destruction” (presumably nuclear in nature). So blatant were his violations of the site’s anti-violence rules that it had to craft new “public-interest exemptions” to justify not kicking him off. Although they couched their decisions in the language of free speech, the president’s wild proclamations were always a huge money spinner; Twitter lost $3.4 billion in market value overnight after announcing the ban last week.

While Trump’s actions clearly breached the company’s terms of service by not only calling for but producing violence, the affair brings up bigger questions about private ownership of public forums and the massive power social media giants like Facebook and Twitter hold over the public sphere. Sixty-eight percent of American adults use Facebook and 25% use Twitter. Both platforms are huge gateways and distributors of news around the world. Facebook is by a long way the most widely used news source in the United States, and both platforms have user bases far larger than the collective circulation of all daily US newspapers. They also give ordinary people the opportunity to share information and build communities, making them immensely important parts of the modern public square.

A free press is the cornerstone of any open, democratic society. But like it or not, in just a few short years, massive online companies have far surpassed the reach of legacy media outlets, with news generally being broken on Twitter before anywhere else. Companies like Google and Facebook have become monopolies by design, squeezing out or buying up the competition. There are no practical alternatives of any size to these behemoths, raising questions of whether they should be in private ownership at all, given their importance to the public discourse.

Western governments already exercise considerable control over the content of social media, but for their own interests, not ours. In 2018, Facebook announced it would be working closely with the Atlantic Council to help it curate its news feeds and stamp out false information (FAIR.org, 5/21/18). The Atlantic Council is a NATO cutout organization funded by the State Department and allied foreign governments. Its board of directors includes high-ranking Bush-era officials like Condoleezza Rice and Colin Powell, US military generals and no fewer than eight former CIA chiefs. When organizations such as these influence the most influential means of global communication, that is coming close to state censorship on a worldwide scale.

Meanwhile, in 2019, a senior Twitter executive was unmasked as an officer in the British Army’s psychological operations and online warfare division. Corporate media reacted with a collective yawn, the news covered by only one US outlet of any note (Newsweek, 10/1/19; see FAIR.org, 10/24/19)—a response that raises many troubling questions about the relationship between deep state and fourth estate. The journalist who covered the story resigned a few weeks later, citing stifling top-down censorship.

Perhaps this helps explain why the online media giants’ primary targets of censorship have always been the domestic left and foreign enemies of Washington. Facebook has shut down pages belonging to a myriad of anti-establishment groups, such as Occupy London and the anti-fascist No Unite the Right, while suspending those of alternative media like TeleSUR English and Venezuelanalysis.

Last year it also announced that, since President Trump had designated the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) a terrorist organization, all posts presenting recently slain General Qassem Soleimani in a positive light would be immediately deleted across its platforms (Instagram, WhatsApp, etc.). “We operate under US sanctions laws, including those related to the US government’s designation of the IRGC and its leadership,” a company spokesperson said. Taking into account that Soleimani had a more than 80% domestic approval rating, this meant that one pronouncement from Trump effectively barred Iranians from sharing their overwhelmingly popular opinion online with each other.

Facebook has also deliberately changed its algorithm in an attempt to throttle traffic to left-wing news sites. Last year, the Wall Street Journal (10/16/20) reported that Mark Zuckerberg personally approved changes that would hit “left-leaning” political news sites harder than previously planned. Meanwhile, conservative and far-right commentators dominate the site, despite their constant and well-documented violations of the terms of service.

Twitter has also purged hundreds of thousands of Russian, Chinese, Turkish and Venezuelan accounts, while constantly suspending antiwar voices and publications. Like with Facebook, left-wing independent news site Venezuelanalysis is a favorite target.

Private companies probably should not be hosting the largest online forums. However, if they do, there need to be transparent and enforced rules in place to deal with grave breaches of conduct. In this sense, it was a prudent decision from social media companies to suspend or ban the president, who has flagrantly disregarded those rules for years.

However, Silicon Valley corporations are far from neutral moral arbiters, and have a history of abusing their power. In 2018, it took barely 24 hours for big tech companies to shift their ire from conservative conspiracy theorist Alex Jones to the left (FAIR.org, 8/22/18), deleting and suspending accounts with little rhyme or reason. Don’t expect this to be the last highly controversial censorship decision they make.

0 notes

timalexanderdollery · 5 years ago

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How the Washington Post’s TikTok became an unofficial 2020 campaign stop

Andrew Yang poses for a selfie. | Ethan Miller/Getty Images

For politicians, the buzziest new social video app presents a risk and an opportunity.

In 2015, Hillary Clinton was “yas queening” all over the internet. She had an official Snapchat account with a “Yaaas, Hillary!” logo that was also a T-shirt, a posed #yas photo with the stars of Broad City, custom Hillary Bitmoji, ironic cross-stitch art, and other signifiers of “yas” culture that’s since become emblematic of a certain kind of blinkered white feminism. An attempt to reach millennials with a passing familiarity with stan culture, it was also an extremely strategy easy to mock. As Amanda Hess wrote at the time in Slate, “American culture does not exactly appreciate the image of the ‘authentic’ older woman, but boy does it hate the older woman who strains to stay relevant.”

Hillary Clinton lost the election. That fact certainly can’t be attributed solely to a social media voice that many criticized as insincere and pandering, but it had a lasting impact on the ways we expect politicians to behave online.

It also might offer a clue on why so few politicians have a presence on the buzziest social media app of the moment, TikTok. Since its US launch in August 2018, the short-form video app has exploded in popularity, having been downloaded more than a billion times in 2018 and boasting 27 million active American users as of February 2019. Both Facebook and Instagram have launched competitors (or clones, depending on whom you ask), and celebrities like Will Smith, Ariana Grande, Ed Sheeran, and Reese Witherspoon are now flocking to the app en masse.

Politicians, meanwhile, have been understandably hesitant to hop on board. Like all social media apps, TikTok has its own vernacular, and any transgressions of that shared language and sensibility stick out like, well, septuagenarian politicians on a social media app meant for teens. The fear of coming off as insincere or being flooded with “ok boomer” comments is a real one. The other outcome? A TikTok presence that fails to leave a mark, like Julian Castro’s account, which currently only has 470 followers.

Still, that leaves an opportunity. Enter: the TikTok account of an equally stodgy publication that has, against all odds, managed to feel truly native to the TikTok ecosystem. It’s the Washington Post’s, which since its debut this spring has amassed a quarter-million followers and a legion of superfans who praise its goofy premises and unserious tone. So far, three candidates — Andrew Yang, Beto O’Rourke, and Julian Castro — have appeared on it.

The Washington Post’s TikTok’s success is the direct result of its creator and biggest star, 28-year-old Dave Jorgenson, who previously created humor and satire videos for the newspaper. A scroll through the Washington Post’s TikTok account will show Dave making self-deprecating jokes about being an adult on the app, Dave occupying the role of “the TikTok guy” in meetings, Dave doing silly 15-second sketches with the paper’s fashion, gaming, and economics reporters.

Jorgenson attributes the growth and fanbase of the account to his spending two months watching and listening to videos on TikTok instead of rushing to quickly turn around content. “If you’re gonna launch anything, whether you’re a newspaper or a brand or a company, you need to understand the app, otherwise people will see right through you,” he says. “Especially on TikTok, because the whole thing is that it’s mostly just raw videos set to music.”

The Washington Post, however, has what regular TikTok users don’t: access to very important people. In October, 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang just happened to be scheduled to visit the Washington Post’s offices filming an unrelated segment when Jorgenson was able to strike a plan with Yang’s team about filming a TikTok.

Yang’s team was already a fan of the Post’s TikTok account; the campaign has also leaned heavily on the fact that he is a tech entrepreneur. “We didn’t really have to sell it to Andrew Yang,” says Jorgenson. “He was like, ‘If they think it’s great, I’m going to do it.’” It’s a particularly impressive feat considering the resulting video was actually poking fun at Yang’s low polling numbers. “Finally relaxing after a full day of interviews and meeting people,” reads the caption on the first segment, followed by “Still polling at 3 percent” against a backdrop of Yang dancing in celebration.

The paper has since done equally self-deprecating videos with both Beto O’Rourke, who ended his campaign on November 1, and Julian Castro, whose video was a play on how much he looks like his brother, Texas Rep. Joaquin Castro. All three videos took off, garnering between 40,000 and 400,000 likes.

Though neither Beto’s nor Castro’s team replied to a request for comment, Yang’s press secretary told Vox, “We’re constantly exploring ways to reach new audiences and voters, and the TikTok video with the Washington Post is certainly one of those ways.”

Since the election of Donald Trump proved politicians could tweet rambling, often nonsensical stream-of-consciousness sentences and still win over voters, politicians have approached social media with an increased candidness. New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has posted her skin care routine to her Instagram stories; O’Rourke live-streamed his haircut; Elizabeth Warren posts videos of herself calling small-dollar donors to social media and makes a point to pose for every single person who wants a selfie after her town halls. In an age where we expect to be welcomed into the homes and lives of everyone we follow online, connecting with politicians has never felt so intimate.

Politicians have historically been pretty terrible at social media. A cursory glance at Mike Huckabee’s tweeting habits will illustrate as much — the former Arkansas governor and presidential candidate was once described by Fast Company as “the least funny person on Twitter.” Even cool-ish, young-ish presidential candidates are sometimes bad at tweeting. Cory Booker has made the same joke — a bit of PG-13 wordplay about coffee and sleep — 14 times over the past decade.

There are now more avenues than ever for politicians to embarrass themselves online. Instagram, for instance, has gained popularity among politicians faster than any other social media platform over the past few years, and was also the site of O’Rourke’s now-infamous live-streamed dentist appointment.

Aidan King, a senior strategist at Middle Seat consulting who has worked on presidential campaigns for both Bernie Sanders and O’Rourke, says that there’s a certain degree of apprehension in approaching any new social media platform. If candidates don’t know precisely who they’re speaking to, their message can be warped into something else. “There’s nothing worse for a political campaign than going viral for the wrong reasons,” he says.

TikTok, with its legions of irony-steeped teens, presents a specific danger. “The zoomers can be pretty ruthless, and it’s also clear which candidates they like a lot,” explains King. “Young people are really into Bernie Sanders, Andrew Yang, Elizabeth Warren, so I can understand why other candidates in the 2020 races just don’t really want to mess with [TikTok]. Joe Biden going on a platform that adores Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is a recipe for disaster. They know the audience well enough to know they wouldn’t really get along with the people there.”

The Washington Post’s TikTok, though, is a controlled environment where candidates have little to lose, even when the content is unlike anything a political PR team would have typically come up with. “There’s just this very positive feeling around TikTok. Even if they are self-deprecating, they’re pretty wholesome,” Jorgenson says. “While the text in front of Andrew Yang was deprecating, it’s very funny. How could that hurt you?”

Jorgenson hopes to get every 2020 Democratic candidate in a video and has reached out to multiple candidates, but there is one white whale in particular. “I think if we get Bernie, then we have done our job, because I don’t know how we’re going to. But I’d be very proud of myself,” he laughs.

There are concerns over TikTok’s ties to the Chinese government (its parent company Bytedance is based in Beijing) and its willingness to bow to conservative governments by censoring pro-LGBTQ content, but the app has always wanted its content to remain politics-free. It recently announced it would ban political advertising out of a desire to remain a “positive, refreshing environment.” While nothing is stopping politicians from using the app, they may be hesitant to engage with one that will soon be under investigation by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States.

It’s also likely it simply isn’t worth building a following on an app where a sizeable portion of its users aren’t even old enough to vote. For now, one-off sketches with the TikTok expert over at the Washington Post will do.

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gracieyvonnehunter · 5 years ago

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How the Washington Post’s TikTok became an unofficial 2020 campaign stop

Andrew Yang poses for a selfie. | Ethan Miller/Getty Images

For politicians, the buzziest new social video app presents a risk and an opportunity.

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corneliusreignallen · 5 years ago

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How the Washington Post’s TikTok became an unofficial 2020 campaign stop

Andrew Yang poses for a selfie. | Ethan Miller/Getty Images

For politicians, the buzziest new social video app presents a risk and an opportunity.

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shanedakotamuir · 5 years ago

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How the Washington Post’s TikTok became an unofficial 2020 campaign stop

Andrew Yang poses for a selfie. | Ethan Miller/Getty Images

For politicians, the buzziest new social video app presents a risk and an opportunity.

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howtousetiktok-blog · 5 years ago

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The Strategy Guiding TikTok’s Worldwide Rise

Several tech startups have taken off as promptly as Beijing-dependent ByteDance, the creator of the very well known fifteen-next video clip application, TikTok. In just two decades, TikTok has emerged to rival providers like Netflix, YouTube, Snapchat, and Facebook with much more than one billion downloads in a hundred and fifty markets all over the world and seventy five languages. On the application, home made films showcase every thing from comedy to lip syncs to pet grooming guidelines that end users produce and share on their telephones. The scrappy, goofy, rapidly-shifting content material has hooked youthful audiences all-around the entire world. Since tiny translation is required, TikTok reaches nicely beyond other thriving Chinese applications this sort of as Tencent’s messaging application WeChat, which is ubiquitous in China but typically applied somewhere else among the Chinese communities maintaining in touch with individuals back again residence. Chinese entrepreneurs this sort of as ByteDance founder Zhang Yiming are displaying that they can be successful in an brazenly aggressive sector internationally alternatively than only in China in which the Fantastic Firewall regulates the web and blocks obtain to quite a few U.S. If you loved this article and you would like to obtain more info about TikTokの使い方マニュアル【動画の作成・編集・アカウント削除】 nicely visit our internet site.

social media web pages. His approach of twin variations of Tik Tok – just one for China’s world-wide-web censored marketplace and one more for the rest of the environment – could be a new model for other digital articles firms aiming for these worldwide reach – such as China-centered digital startups with new ambitions to venture out outside of the home current market. Their story might also maintain lessons for American corporations who have watched related ventures into China fulfill severe constraints. From the begin, Zhang, a previous Microsoft engineer and Chinese serial entrepreneur, had the aim of managing a borderless firm. Zhang, 36, is among the a new technology of household-grown Chinese tech leaders with an worldwide vision inspired by the early achievements of China’s tech pioneers of the late nineties these as Robin Li of Baidu, Jack Ma of Alibaba, and Pony Ma of Tencent. ByteDance has a valuation of $78 billion ─ 1 of China’s 86 "unicorns" in 2018. Its backers span top-notch venture capitalist company Sequoia Funds China, Japanese tech conglomerate Softbank Team, U.S. private fairness trader KKR, Chinese investment decision agency Hillhouse Funds and company venture unit SIG Asia. As a privately financed digital information startup established by a tech entrepreneur, ByteDance has a unique romantic relationship with the Chinese governing administration and its grip on point out-owned conglomerates. But in heading world-wide, the China-originated ByteDance could face heightened distrust and scrutiny primarily as security problems have enveloped Chinese telecom giant Huawei in readying the start of its fifth technology, large-speed networks internationally. In August 2012, 5 months soon after founding ByteDance, Zhang released his first cell application, Toutiao or Today’s Headlines, an AI-powered day-to-day curated feed of news content material customized to people. In 2016, Zhang included to his merchandise lineup by introducing a online video sharing app, Douyin, for the Chinese market. He rolled out an overseas equivalent of the Douyin movie app, dubbed TikTok, in 2017. That identical 12 months, ByteDance paid out an estimated $900 million to acquire Musical.ly, a social video app dependent in Shanghai with much more than two hundred million consumers all over the world and a massive adhering to in the U.S. The deal merged TikTok’s AI‑fed streams and monetization keep track of report with Musical.ly’s item innovation and grasp of users’ requirements and preferences in the West. Soon after ByteDance folded the four-year-outdated Musical.ly into TikTok, and rebranded it to a solitary application under the TikTok title in August 2018, the put together app promptly received some 30 million new consumers inside three months. The app will make dollars by advertisements and from the sale of virtual goods such as emojis and stickers to admirers. An easy-to-use interface combining click-baity news and leisure with effective AI to precisely match buyers alternatively than advise articles based on their viewing behaviors and "likes" have fueled the app’s achievement. The homegrown written content has develop into commonplace, significantly among the rural and poorer residents in China, India, and other emerging marketplaces wherever entry to other electronic amusement options has been restricted. In China’s smaller sized cities and the countryside, in which condition-owned, stodgy media has dominated, the new ByteDance content material apps are primarily well known. Zhang has also constructed upon China’s want to make AI a priority in the race for international tech dominance. He describes a mission to "merge the electric power of AI with the progress of mobile web to revolutionize the way men and women take in and receive details." Enterprise husband or wife Connie Chan at Andreessen Horowitz in San Francisco wrote in her weblog that the AI‑powered apps at ByteDance go to an extreme not popular nonetheless in the West. TikTok works by using the app’s algorithms to determine which films to clearly show customers, dictates their feed entirely, and learns their preferences the far more just one works by using it. This is diverse from Facebook, Netflix, Spotify, and YouTube, which use AI to advise posts fairly than deliver feeds to customers immediately, she notes. Despite regulatory and other challenges, ByteDance is creating an empire of applications for a new era and demanding the borders drawn close to common electronic information. If ByteDance can continue on to satisfy its mission of becoming a borderless organization with activity shifting technologies, it may guide to the generation of other borderless businesses and will affect other tech innovators from emerging markets to undertaking out way too. Eventually, this craze will produce a fuller variety of digital offerings globally for buyers and corporations.

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