Betty wrote about her normie husband the other day, and that got me thinking because I’m married to a political normie, too. She’s a liberal/progressive Democrat who doesn’t follow politics much, though she hates Trump with the passion of a thousand flaming suns. Anyway, she grew up in the Dakotas, like me. Unlike me, she’s on Facebook, and she has a lot of relatives and friends back where we grew up. Most of them are, naturally, conservative, and some of them are rabid.
Our conversations have two themes: decoding and lamenting. By “decoding”, I mean trying to figure out the genesis of whatever horseshit story is being pushed on Facebook that day. That mostly happened earlier this year when some of her connections were pushing right wing bullshit that you can only understand if you spend hours watching Fox at night. We moved to the lamentations after the election, when her connects began spouting theories about non-existent election fraud.
She made a good point the other day — she’s not the only liberal or centrist Democrat (or even centrist Republican) among her connections. Yet, she noted, nobody (including her) says anything as the most feral morons on her feed push out their hot garbage. The reason is probably obvious to any of you, but engaging with these folks just encourages them, and it’s an exhausting, pointless exercise. Still, I’m sure at one point these idiots got some pushback, and Facebook’s algorithm dutifully recorded that as “engagement” and trained itself to prefer the kind of language present in their posts. Since that algorithm earns Mark Zuckerberg a lot of money, it’s natural that this is position on Steve Bannon:
Mark Zuckerberg told an all-staff meeting that Steve Bannon has not violated enough policies to be suspended from Facebook. Bannon suggested in a now-removed video that FBI Director Christopher Wray and Dr. Anthony Fauci should be beheaded. https://t.co/8dIPbyDNKG
— Sabrina Siddiqui (@SabrinaSiddiqui) November 12, 2020
The results of the election show that shithead Trump worshipers is a growing group, and Facebook is a huge part of the reason. I know this is obvious to us, but my normie believes it, so maybe some kind of regulation of Facebook would be accepted by normies in addition to those of us who are more engaged.
Just Chuck
If it were anyone else threatening anyone else, they would have been suspended. I’ve never been happier that I deleted my FB account. Fuck Zuck.
Baud
I’m not on Facebook and I would cut anyone who regularly engaged to right wing conspiracy theories out of my life, so I have nothing constructive to offer except I do believe that at some point, silence equals consent.
It would be nice to learn how to push back without it being exhausting. It shouldn’t be out job to debunk all of their lies.
Baud
By definition, we’re growing too then.
Tractarian
I think we’re over-expanding the definition of “normie” a bit here? She may not be obsessed with politics but she has certainly taken a side. Be thankful she’s an ally!
No offense, but what makes this a good point? If nobody pushes back against the garbage, then there’s no engagement, and the morons don’t get promoted. That’s obviously not what’s happening from a national perspective.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
barely on-topic, but: Last night on MSNBC, Ali Velshi was talking to Kara Swisher about her most recent interview with Zuckerberg, and prefaced his question with something like, “He’s one of the most interesting figures of our time… blah blah blah?” and she started her answer with a brief raised eyebrow and “Well, I don’t know how interesting he is, but in any case…”
Small thing, but it cracked me up. And I don’t know much about him, but I wouldn’t be surprised if Zuckerberg saw that and wrote it down in his Festivus Folder.
I’m not on Facebook, and tech talk makes my mind wander to more interesting subjects, like soup, but I’m all in on breaking up what sure looks like an unhealthy monopoly.
Baud
@Tractarian:
My definition of normies is someone who doesn’t follow politics daily like we do. It had nothing to do with being an independent or undecided voter.
Van Buren
If someone starts advocating for the beheading of Zuckerberg, will Facebook kick them out permanently and let them remove all traces of it from their phone?
AFAF
scav
Ah, from a business perspective, facebook doesn’t care at all if the face is actually attached to a head or a body. Your memorial page is possibly as good a revenue stream as your live one, provided they get their metrics right.
BruceFromOhio
Screaming “fire!” in crowded theaters – protected political speech or batshit insanity? Views differ.
This is what FB, the twatter, and the grifting band of two-bit ratfuck soulless criminals have provided for us all to enjoy.
Creatures like Zuckerberg don’t want to police the platforms, because that opens the door to someone policing Zuckerberg.
RandomMonster
I defriend wingnuts, with the single exception of my brother who I just ignore. But every day I ask myself if the modest number of other connections I maintain on FB are worth keeping the account.
Four Seasons Total Landscaping mistermix
@Tractarian:
The point is that most of the stuff posted to Facebook by RWNJs isn’t disputed because, at least once and probably more times than that, people have pushed back and realized how fruitless it is.
Four Seasons Total Landscaping mistermix
@Baud:
Yeah, but a lot of these people are relatives and she likes to keep track of their non-political lives. I think that’s reasonable on her part.
Cheryl Rofer
There is something badly wrong with Mark Zuckerberg
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Baud: Marc Maron (podcasting comedian) was talking a few months back– I think post-Covid, even– about how the Resistance to trump had cooled, and he imagined people sitting on their couch saying, well, I don’t really like him, but it’s not like we had to change cable companies.
Roger Moore
@Tractarian:
I think “normie” is a bit of a slippery concept. There certainly are people who know about politics but don’t completely marinate in it, e.g. by becoming regulars on political blogs, and I think it’s reasonable to include people like that among “normies”.
Calouste
Oh frapious day!
Here’s a picture of Dominic Cummings literally walking out of Downing Street with a cardboard box with his belongings in his hands:https://www.theguardian.com/politics/live/2020/nov/13/dominic-cummings-boris-johnson-coronavirus-covid-19-latest-updates-live?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
BruceFromOhio
@Four Seasons Total Landscaping mistermix:
This is the beauty of Rovian politics writ large, and how it has irradiated the dna of cultural and societal norms.
Twist a thing (anything – a court, an election, a minority, a country) to suit your purpose.
If you can’t twist it to suit your purpose, break it so no one else can use it.
Attack anything that isn’t tightly and perfectly aligned with your purpose.
It’s been two decades since Turdblossom unleashed this on the body politic, and it’s path to the mindless, self-reinforcing echo chamber is the unfortunate result.
Baud
@Four Seasons Total Landscaping mistermix:
I get that it’s tough with family, so no judgment, but I would cut out family too given how personally offensive a lot of the accusations have become. There’s a point where it’s disrespectful to me on a personal level, not simply a generic lie.
CaseyL
Oy. Remember when the biggest problem with FB was everyone sending you invitations to Farmville?
I deleted my account quite a while ago and feel no urge to rejoin. Even then it was getting harder to push back against stupidity and misinformation, and it pissed me off to see my RL friends on FB posting RW and apocalyptic bullshit.
Zuck’s just a soulless pissant who measures his worth by how much money he has; a MOTU wannabe. I don’t know if there are more of those types around than ever, but it sure seems like there are.
Baud
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Until COVID, most people were not affected by Trump in a personal tangible way.
Brachiator
@Tractarian:
I don’t do FB, so I don’t know if conversation regularly veers from the personal to the political. That said, I don’t think that people have any special obligation to engage or challenge idiot or even offensive political discussions.
Some people may be trying to deliberately push buttons, and if you don’t follow politics intently or engage in political discourse with those closest to you in real life, you don’t have to do it on social media.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
My Normies: My brother and sister are regular voters, regular Dems, but not particularly engaged. After the 2016 election, when we would meet for lunch, he was constantly pulling his phone out and showing me things about trump. My sister told me the other day she’s sending her first ever political donations to Warnock and Ossoff.
different-church-lady
…, sociopath. It’s that simple.
kmeyerthelurker
I’ve been off of FB for years, but my wife still uses. Here’s a bit of a horrorshow:
she has three older sisters, two of whom are human, one of whom is a monster. When their father passed a few years ago, the monster took over his FB account and used it to taunt them and insult them. Still is, in fact. They’ve all complained multiple times, with no action whatsoever.
So beyond political misuse, garden variety abuse, regardless of how monstruous, is not a problem for them at all.
JPL
@Cheryl Rofer: One has to wonder what he was doing in Iowa on a listening tour, and maybe he believes he’ll be the next trump. Help us all if that happens.
cmorenc
@BruceFromOhio:
Actually the origin was not Rove in 2000, but Gingrich in 1994, with evolutionary roots in lee atwater in 1988 and paul weyrich in the reagan era pre-internet direct mail. And rush limbaugh.
Baud
The other platitude I’ll offer is that the best defense is a good offense.
How many of our people on Facebook are posting positive stories and messages about our side? Just like we needed a record turnout to beat their record turnout, we’re probably not going to win the Facebook wars by trying to counter their offensives. We need to be on offense ourselves, especially given the media environment we’re up against.
I’ve probably been on this soapbox since my days at daily kos. Our side has had a tremendous problem practicing positive reinforcement. We are wired to criticize and deconstruct.
kindness
I solved my FB crazy friends issue by unfollowing them. They are still listed as friends and I can still message them but I don’t see their feeds and they don’t see mine. It really has been a god-send.
Steve in the ATL
So, the Dakotas is a real place that people are from? Huh. Did not know that.
Our neighbors at the lake are from Flagstaff, AZ, which they also purport to be a real place. They seem nice, but I’m still skeptical.
West of the Rockies
And what gave us Trump? It’s not a single, simple, linear answer, but I’ll take a hot stab at it.
Racism and misogyny gave us a swath of people susceptible to The Southern Strategy. The Southern Strategy emboldened religious conservatives, which led to The Moral Majority (ah, already a feedback loop is in play!). This dynamic led a greedy media to give a platform to Limbaugh and 50 pale imitators. As idiocy was elevated on the public stage, we see the rise of Palin. Trump is a “logical” byproduct.
The feedback loop is now robust, and clinically sociopathic people like homely Mark Zuckerberg have monetized it.
Kent
Engagement isn’t limited to pushback. Hitting “like” or forwarding a post is just as much engagement as pushing back. That’s how this shit explodes. They pass it around like a crack pipe and it just gets bigger and bigger each time someone takes a puff.
Barbara
@Van Buren: Well, when someone started using their YouTube account to call for unkind things to happen to the CEO of YouTube they got squashed like a bug. Apparently, only masters of the universe deserve safety and peace of mind. Although there are certain FB groups I am nominally part of, I no longer look at it at all.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@kmeyerthelurker: when my brother died, we tried to get his Facebook account deleted. He was… troubled… and had posted some stuff that we were worried might cause problems for my parents. The hoops they were demanding we jump through were unbelievable. In fact, my sister was in charge of that, and I don’t know if she was ever able to do it.
Suzanne
None of my people are normies. Everyone is firmly on a side. I unfriended a lot of assholes; life is better for it.
I thought this was a great interview with David Shor. Would love to hear y’all’s thoughts.
NotMax
1920 campaign: A return to normalcy.
2020 campaign: A return to normiecy.
;)
Ruckus
@Just Chuck:
This right here.
I mostly stayed off FuckBook as much as possible for almost 2 years and then about a year ago I deleted my account. I don’t miss it at all.
Brachiator
@CaseyL:
Zuck measures his worth by the degree to which his social media platform has changed society. I think that for him wealth is cool, but secondary.
Roger Moore
@BruceFromOhio:
I think it’s more than that. The problem is that Facebook wants to capture people’s attention; their ideal world is one where we live our lives completely through their platform so they can monetize every aspect of our lives. That means they want stuff that grabs and maintains our attention. That’s the only thing they care about, and that’s what their algorithm drives. It doesn’t matter if the stuff that grabs our attention is destroying our society, as long as it keeps our attention.
Betty Cracker
Bingo. I know a woman who noticed that her FB feed had become a depressing hellscape, and she consciously conducted an experiment to reverse that by only engaging positive content. It worked. For me, deleting my FB page several years ago worked even better.
Maybe someone who understands how the platforms operate better than I do will tell me I’m wrong, but Twitter seems far less damaging to democracy because it doesn’t pretend to be a news organization. It can be an echo chamber, but that’s up to you.
Barbara
@Calouste: Is it the day when reality finally catches up with their fever dreams?
Yarrow
Facebook is being used by Russia as an influence and disinformation op. Here’s an article from 2009 about Russian investment in the company.
So the Russians gave Facebook a really good deal. Zuckerberg may or may not have realized at the time but he was being bought and now they influence him. Little wonder they don’t police rightwing propaganda very much and promote a lot of disinformation.
Related:
Parler is Twitter for wingnuts and their associates. It’s another Russian op.
Kent
I do the same thing for my crazy relatives. It’s honestly not the political shit, it’s the volume of constant recipes and trite religious memes and that sort of shit. If someone is posting more than a couple of times/week I unfollow them because I don’t have time to read through all their stupid shit to see what other friends are doing.
Brachiator
@NotMax:
Some producer has got to be working on a sitcom, “My Little Normie.”
narya
My friend doesn’t FB at all, avoids social media. Was raised in WI when republicans did things like protect the natural resources of the state. He thrashes around a lot–hates that current repubs are for party/against the country, but Hates Them All, thinks all politicians (esp. Senate) are from elite families (yeah, I know). I’ve done a lot of work to point out that trying to be a welcoming place (i.e., dems) means it’s messy and complicated. He ignored politics for a long time, and was very turned off by the IranContra hearings–thought it was appalling that they got away w/ it–so it’s hard to find a way to engage him w/o breaking his brain. (He reads slowly, too, so sending him long things to read is not a useful strategy.) Oddly enough, I think meeting my (very lefty) parents has been helpful.
Amir Khalid
@Cheryl Rofer:
Yes, there is: greed.
S. Cerevisiae
I keep hearing from some of my right wing relatives on FB that it censors the right and they are loudly moving to something called Parler where everyone can let their freak flag fly.
Jeffro
I’ve been seeing my religious-right mom devolve into (political) irrationality over the past couple of years due to Facebook, much like my dad did due to Fox News.
It’s sad to see. I guess they’d rather keep mainlining outrage and MAGA bullshit rather than go through withdrawal symptoms.
Ruckus
@Tractarian:
Part of the problem is that on of the major political parties is the main pusher of all the bullshit and it gets amplified on FB and the owner of FB likes all of the bullshit.
So it becomes a self full filling circle jerk. It feeds and reinforces that BS.
BruceFromOhio
@cmorenc: Yep, that’s the arc. I credit Rove for packaging it up in a way that made it more accessible and irradiating the electorate with it. Atwater/Gringrich/et al may have been architects, Rove got it deployed so successfully that everyone copied it.
Like radiation damage, it never goes away.
Cowboy up, hombres, every election from now on will be exactly like this one.
different-church-lady
@Roger Moore: As I said years ago: they want all information to flow through their gates, but then claim they don’t want to be “gate keepers.”
Disingenuous assholes working for a sociopath.
Suzanne
@Yarrow: Getting a Parler account is also an easy way to get a FBI file and freak out your employer.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@S. Cerevisiae: a friend of my brother’s, not someone I’ve ever thought of as political– and someone I’ve disliked with varying degrees of intensity since high school–, recently announced he’s joining Parler because he’s tired of seeing turmp supporters smeared as racist.
NotMax
@Brachiator
Silly fluff that it was, Gertrude Hoffman as impish octogenarian Mrs. Odetts on My Little Margie was a hoot.
WhatsMyNym
@Calouste:
That made my day.
Kay
It should be fun to watch all these hacks and liars try to clean up this shitshow and turn it into a gracious concession. They think they’ll be able to do that after another month of this? They’re absolutely AMAZING liars but I think even they can’t pull it off.
Brachiator
@Roger Moore:
Here’s part of the dilemma. People want their online experience to be free or cheap. People want an infinite amount of entertainment or engagement for $9.99 a month.
But if it’s free on the Internet, then you are the product.
Also, younger people seem to have no problem with finding and using alternatives to FB. Of course the problem here is when Zuck buys up competitors. But still, he cannot herd people to FB who don’t want to be there.
Also, a core vulnerability is still there. If a service is free, the price of moving somewhere else is extremely low. Who here is still on Compuserve or AOL?
Yarrow
@S. Cerevisiae:
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
They’re being sucked in by a Russian op. See my comment above. Social media can be and is being weaponized by our enemies. It turns us against each other and will end up destroying us if we don’t do something to deal with it. It’s a national security threat.
West of the Rockies
@Yarrow:
Did I read that Soros is a chief investor in Parler?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I saw someone suggest the other day that for all the talk about the coming trump TeeVee, and the apparently dead rumors that Fredo was gonna buy OANN, trump could have more influence and make more money on substack
today Matt Yglesias announced he is leaving Vox to set himself up on substack.
I guess over the next few months I may have to learn about substack. Then again, I ignored quibbi and it went away.
PenAndKey
In my own personal life I was the one who essentially fractured my family into two factions that refuse to talk to one another, and it was entirely because I refused to stay silent and insisted on engaging with the more “conservative” members of my family whenever they tried anything. This caused… issues, and a lot of heated conversations that fractured it even further.
All I got out of pushing back, for years, was the winnowing down my family I’m willing to be in the same room with list from “everyone” to “my parents, brother, maternal grandparents, and two cousins”. That’s something like an 80% cut-off rate, and most of that was from their conduct on Facebook.
Once I took that step and realized how few friends I actually had on the platform left it was only natural to delete the app. These days I only use it for Messenger, and then only because it’s the only messaging app I can get my parents to use reliably. As far as I’m concerned the whole platform would be better off getting an EMP to the face.
Barbara
@Brachiator: The point is that Zuckerberg knows who uses FB and who doesn’t and he can obviously see that the average age of users is trending upward. He has no answers, we can only answer for him by declining to participate.
catclub
Given the economy in January, he gets re-elected.
Brachiator
@NotMax:
Glad that you caught the reference. I must have been a kid, but I remember watching the show and I remember it being funny.
The Other Bob
I think I am a former political junkie/ volunteer/ employee of politicos, turned normie.
I used to work in the legislature, volunteer all the time, knock doors, serve on Dem Party boards and more. I can’t mentally do it anymore and am now a single dad. I feel guilty because I am not as involved as I was when the stakes were lower. I still donate money and such, but not like I used to.
I guess I am not like Betty’s nomie husband because I don’t sleep well at night.
Kay
They’re still telling him they’ll go along with overturning an election. Just absolutely bankrupt people. As bad as you thought they were, they’re far, far worse.
Put any of these people back into the Presidency and they’ll never leave. They’ve shown the entire country what they are. Anti-democratic. People who are vulnerable to strongman leaders. Not trustworthy enough to defend anything. Weak and easily captured.
BruceFromOhio
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
… in a flash of a billion dollars being vaporized. Quite a sight.
Litlebritdifrnt
Well according to the Press Sec Trump is going to be inaugurated on Jan 20th. One would assume therefore that he is going to hold his own little “pretend” inauguration ceremony, and knowing him probably at the Whitehouse. Interesting times.
Yarrow
@West of the Rockies: You did read that! And it’s not true. The Twitter comment I linked above is from a thread that has lots of info on Parler. The guy who founded it has a Russian wife. What a surprise. The funding may have some connection to the Mercers (again, what a surprise) but it isn’t confirmed.
catclub
wait a minute BalloonJuice is free. Isn’t it?
Frankensteinbeck
@Baud:
This is the essence of the ‘wrestling with a pig’ analogy.
@Yarrow:
If Putin really is sick and retiring permanently, how will that affect things? His successor is unlikely to have Putin’s personal grudge against the US and obsession with rebuilding the empire.
MJS
I was going to chime in with, “Who cares. No one uses Facebook any more.” Then I did a quick Google. Jesus Christ, with all of the stories about Facebook pushing false information, and the other social media platforms available, why are so many people still on Facebook? How is it any better than giving someone you want to stay in contact with your cell number or email address? I don’t get it.
Amir Khalid
@S. Cerevisiae:
And they’re not suspicious because parler is a French word?
PenAndKey
@Litlebritdifrnt: Well, that’d be… interesting. Though I really can’t see the secret service going along with that sort of delusional conduct, it does bring up the question of when precisely they’d go from having to follow Trump’s orders to, presumably, getting the orders to force him to vacate the premises. My vote? In the middle of any such ceremony.
Yarrow
@Kay:
Not me. I’ve considered them traitors since 2016 so I’m not remotely surprised with much of anything they do.
Baud
@catclub:
i don’t concede that, but I think it might have been closer. Perhaps even close enough to steal.
mali muso
@Baud:
I have cut off a lot of family not just on FB but in real life. Because this shit IS personal. My husband is a black man and an immigrant. Our daughter is going to grow up as a black woman in a racist society. If the people who say they “love us” support a political movement dedicated to eradicating us, then fuck them. They are no longer family.
PenAndKey
Simple answer? Most people don’t use cell numbers as a standard contact method, and even fewer use emails as anything close to a social contact method. People don’t generally want a conversation, they just want to stay in touch enough that they know what’s going on. That, and good luck sharing baby pictures via text chat.
My mother has MS. My son was born three months early and had already cost insurance companies a million dollars by the time he was three months old. My wife is only alive because of an emergency D&C a few years ago. And yet, we still have family members who say that anyone who has an abortion is a murderer who should be executed, and anyone with a pre-existing condition is just a moocher who doesn’t deserve healthcare. They said this while knowing the details I’ve just shared, and they did it to my face on more than one occasion. Honestly, I’m lucky I don’t have an assault rap sheet, and I consider cutting them off doing them a favor.
Yarrow
@Frankensteinbeck: Who knows. Do we have any confirmation that he’s sick and retiring? There’s sort of a chicken and egg thing with whether the oligarchs own Putin or Putin owns the oligarchs. The next leader of Russia will have to deal with the oligarchs as well.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@The Other Bob: I wish I could make the switch.
@MJS: did your google have any data on active accounts? what I’m hearing from my cohort (50s, give or take), about themselves and their kids/families is “I/they have accounts, but I/they never look at it”. I know a couple of my 80+ aunts have accounts that they look(ed) at when their kids came over and signed in to show them what long-distance relatives had posted.
FlyingToaster
I refused point-blank to join Facebook when various relatives tried badgering me. Too many of them are either religious nut jobs or too Republican-curious for me to want the fucking headache. My mom has an account which she periodically has to go lock down, because Facebook changes the settings every other week. She basically posts only positive things (pro-Obama, pro-Clinton, pro-Biden, pro-Harris) and it pisses off her remaining sibling and his kids. But they aren’t allowed to post shit on her page (heh). Her other nieces/nephews love it, especially the “did you post this to piss off Uncle Q?”.
Mom mostly wants Facebook to keep track of two of her kids and various adult grandkids, and her one great-grandchild. She knows that I NEVER will have it, and that FB is blocked from tracking on all but one of the devices here at ChezToaster (HerrDoktor works at a ‘Net security firm; I’m sysadmin; WarriorTeen reads the reddit horror stories and wants me to install a VPN on their phone now).
I have the family Chromebook with a family Instagram account solely for seeing the pictures from Middle School. If we ever have to get FB, that’s the fake-ass account that will be used, on equipment that is not used by any individual for anything but PTA Zoom calls and looking at private Instagram accounts.
Just Chuck
dupe dee dupe, FYWP.
Oklahomo
@Suzanne: Isn’t that the service pushed by that shitcreep Dan Bongino?
Just Chuck
@Brachiator: If the service is free, YOU are the product. That indirectly includes the advertising-supported BJ, though BJ itself is just paying expenses that way and isn’t motivated to twist everything to serve the almighty Revenue Stream.
(beaten to it by Brachiator. Er … you. Must have misclicked)
Yarrow
Lol. Going out with a whimper.
Kattails
this is why I have never been on Facebook, never will be, will never support this piece of shit. There is nothing that the platform could do for me, even as an artist, that would be worth the continual undermining of our institutions and democracy.
MJS
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Good point. What I looked at didn’t distinguish between active and inactive accounts. My wife died over 8 years ago, and I’ve done nothing to try to get rid of the account, mainly because I heard it’s difficult to do so. So there may be many, many inactive accounts, for any number of reasons.
MJS
@Yarrow: I saw that. If that’s the conclusion in Arizona, where the margin is about 11,000, how long until they abandon PA, where the margin is 60,000 and growing?
PJ
@MJS:
@PenAndKey: Yeah, I think laziness and/or convenience is the main factor for a lot of people. They can push out personal news without having to personally engage with others. Which is symptomatic of our times. I’m old enough to remember when people would circulate personal news by calling their friends and family, or writing letters. They would do it every day, and it was no big deal.
So much of our attention is absorbed by computers these days, whether it’s for work, social media, regular media (news, music, movies, tv, youtube, etc.), that people feel they have no time for phone calls or even email.
I’m not on Facebook, but I am as susceptible as anyone to the engagement cycle. Ironically, this started for me due to anxiety and depression about politics in the Bush years, and over the years, the internet has done its job of increasing my anxiety and depression. In the olden days, all the time I spend here reading posts and comments and writing comments myself, I would have spent doing something more creative and more fulfilling. Yet here I am.
raven
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: The Southern Dragon was a regular on FDL and he died over 10 years ago. A few of us still send birthday greetings to him.
CaseyL
@Baud: It would be interesting to know how much impact VBM had in places that previously used lack of polling access to suppress hundreds of thousands of votes, like GA, WI, MI and PA.
WI, MI and PA also have Democratic governors, but I’m not sure how much that would have impacted in-person voting since at least PA still has a GOP-led state legislature.
IOW, voting by mail kept the election from being close enough to steal.
raven
@PJ: It’s fine, I don’t fuck around with right wingers and I stay in touch with folks I never would have another way. But what the hell, I watch morning joe, read the times and watch tv and don’t really give a fuck who doesn’t like it.
Kent
That billion dollars didn’t vanish. Actually it was $1.75 billion of venture capital money. Money is like matter. It can neither be created nor destroyed, it just changes hands. They just took $1.75 billion dollars and transferred it from less deserving to more deserving individuals! Plenty of filmmakers and content providers made money there. That money still exists. They just don’t have it anymore.
geg6
@Four Seasons Total Landscaping mistermix:
No, they get their accounts suspended. This is what happens to all my friends and myself when we do it. Some snowflake complains we were being mean and we get a 7 day or 30 day suspension. Never happens to the RWNJs though.
Chief Oshkosh
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Wait, that’s an option? Sign me up!
Chief Oshkosh
@cmorenc: Absolutely correct. Turdblossom is just one of several points of shit, with several before him and several after him.
different-church-lady
@MJS:
Dopamine hits from constant interactivity. Same as nicotine added to cigarettes, except psychological instead pharmacological. The point is not “staying in touch”, the point is constant stimulation, distracting one from the meaninglessness of modern life.
Just Chuck
@Chief Oshkosh: A Thousand Points Of Shit, if you will ;)
different-church-lady
@Kent: I got some of it.
raven
Not using Facebook won’t save us from Tommy Tubberville. He thinks we fought WW2 to free the world from socialism.
Yarrow
@raven: Pretty sure Jesus rode in on a dinosaur to free us from socialism, so that checks out.
raven
What utter bullshit, this place is facebook without pictures.
Just Chuck
@raven: Lemme guess, because the Nazis had “Socialist” in their name. Hell, the full name of the party was the “National Socialist Democratic Workers Party”, so clearly Democrats are fascists too. As are Workers, I guess. These are the shredded facts and reason that orbit the event horizon of the Wingularity.
geg6
@West of the Rockies:
Snopes has debunked that.
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/george-soros-own-parler/
geg6
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
That’s where Sully and Bari Weis whine now.
WaterGirl
@catclub: Yes, but at Balloon Juice, we are the exception that proves the rule.
Most of the potential web developers we talked to initially struggled with the concept that we weren’t trying to sell anything, and that John wasn’t trying to make money off the site.
Betty Cracker
@geg6: No kidding? Damn. I know Twitter puts people in time out a lot (I’ve avoided it myself so far; I suspect because I block MAGAs on sight), but I didn’t know FB was doing that too, in a heavy-handed way. Been off it for a few years, and when I was on it, I mostly used it to keep track of old friends and far-flung family.
trollhattan
Do I want to know what a normie is?
WaterGirl
@Yarrow: Perhaps there is a level of humiliation Dump’s lawyers are unwilling to endure. For awhile, it seemed limitless.
Just Chuck
@trollhattan: Someone who doesn’t know how to end the sentence “Two wetsuits and …”
trollhattan
@Yarrow:
Sounds like somebody opened the lawyers’ invoice.
geg6
@MJS:
It’s a quick and easy way for me to keep in touch with old friends, scattered all over the US and the world. I am also a member of several FB groups that did amazing work over the last four years in regard to resistance and elections. I simply am not friends with anyone who is RWNJ. I unfriended every single one of them on 11/9/16. Unless, of course, they hadn’t shown their true colors yet. Once they did, they got unfriended. You don’t have to engage with these assholes. You choose who you engage with. I see no Trump or GOP propaganda at all because I have no connections to anyone in that world.
SamR
I don’t know if anything works, but one thing I’ve started doing is asking questions rather than making arguments. You argue, and they get their backs up. Its tougher to do that if you’re just being asked a question.
trollhattan
@Just Chuck:
Heh. That’s how I’ll filter my acquaintances, going forward.
JustRuss
@kindness: I really need to do this. I’ve been off FB for 4 months, but it did keep me in touch with some folks. Just not looking forward to cleaning up the cray-cray.
Villago Delenda Est
Zuckerberg needs a tumbrel ride. You can even post that sentiment on Facebook and get away with it.
WaterGirl
@raven:
Raven, John Cole does not collect our information, he does not sell our information, he does not use our information. I’m sorry, but to say that Balloon Juice is facebook without pictures is absurd.
SiubhanDuinne
MSNBC has now called Joe Biden the “apparent winner” in Georgia. It’s no surprise, of course — and I wish they could just go ahead and call it without using terms like “apparent” — but I comfort myself with the knowledge that as much as this is dragging on and on for us, it must be purely excruciating for Trump and all the little Trumpkins and Trumpies.
Anotherlurker
Well, I am trying a FB experiment. I suggested the beheading of Zuck and his top management.
Let’s see how long before I end up in Facebook Jail.
no comment
@Roger Moore:
@Tractarian:
I disagree. Even if you’re only reading the titles & skimming the first paragraph on most blog posts here, you’ve picked up way more political info than most people. Maybe that’s changed a bit lately because everyone is bombarded with info from or about the pResident multiple times a day, but I’d guess that otherwise, most people aren’t as politically informed as those who hang out here.
I know that when I was younger, I was definitely in the “normie” category. When I wasn’t actively avoiding political news or discussions, I was too busy with other things to pay much attention.
trollhattan
Timing.
Looking at today’s county COVID dashboard, we are six new cases away from the historical high of July 20.
SiubhanDuinne
@raven:
He also thinks the House and the Senate are two separate branches of government.
Brachiator
@Barbara:
I only have a Facebook account because some close friends use it big time. But I only use Messenger. I have rarely read anything on regular FB and never posted anything. I cannot imagine using the service as a source of news.
Oddly enough, my niece and nephew used FB when they were teens, but abandoned it when they went off to college.
Barbara
@geg6: I agree that FB is useful for keeping in contact with casual acquaintances that you would otherwise lose track of. The groups I belong to on FB are either politically neutral (my fitness studio) or designed to get information out about causes I agree with. The problem is that the “personal” connections people have often include family members whose politics are radically different. I friended a bunch of my cousins at one point, and most of them are neutral, but a few are just blisteringly bugfuck crazy, and of course, they are the ones who never shut up. I do have one who is obsessive in the other direction, and even though I mostly agree with him, I just get tired of seeing the endless stream of unedifying back and forth. So mostly, I just avoid FB altogether.
Feathers
@different-church-lady: I remember a good while ago Amanda Marcotte, who grew up in small town West Texas, said that part of the appeal of Republicanism was that it mirrored the energy and appeal of small town busybodies. Constant drama for the relief of boredom. Always being right, without any effort. Moral certitude through scolding, no right actions or thought necessary. Just follow the Republican Party line.
trollhattan
@WaterGirl:
On that topic, I have the Facebook container add-on for FF to block their tracking, which I have come to understand is ubiquitous at this point. I’m fighting the power, man!
VeniceRiley
@MJS: I don’t get my news from FB. But I did meet my future wife there, and am engaged in many fulfilling fan groups and interests outside of politics there. Thankfully, it’s not showing me any RWNJ memes anymore, though no doubt some of my family still shares those.
Frankensteinbeck
@trollhattan:
A politically unengaged person, with the implication that paying so much attention to politics makes us unusual – which is probably true.
geg6
@PJ:
I’m a part of the over 60 contingent here and I’m happy to have FB so as to never have to take those calls or whatever from people. I have never been one to talk on the phone, even when I was a teenage girl. In fact, I hate it worse than almost anything. I’ve reconnected with some of my oldest friends from childhood and high school with whom I’d lost touch. Now we’re back in touch even though we live in all four corners of the country and everywhere in between, not to mention a few who are residing in Europe. Some of us who live in proximity have had get togethers for marches and rallies and such. I’m glad to have the platform to do that because it would never had happened without FB. If you use FB to your advantage, you get none of these drawbacks.
JanieM
@Anotherlurker: I thought of that, but since I am not now nor have I ever been on Facebook, I couldn’t do the experiment myself. Let us know how it turns out!
geg6
@raven:
For real.
Barbara
@Anotherlurker: Elizabeth Warren tried something similar, disseminating highly inflammatory and false information about Zuckerberg, but she couldn’t really make the point work, because FB knew it was a stunt.
TheronWare
Joe Biden gets 306 electoral votes!
debbie
@Four Seasons Total Landscaping mistermix:
I’m on FB, and politics sometimes come up in the cooking or gardening groups I follow. There is always pushback. I stay out of it, which isn’t always easy, but RWNJs are roundly mocked every time.
geg6
@Betty Cracker:
I have a friend who is a chef in our campus’ food services and he is constantly in time out. I’ve been suspended a couple of times for being mean to RWNJs who comment on an old friend’s posts. Said old friend is one of the staff attorneys for the Dem caucus in Harrisburg. Old friend laughs and laughs and laughs about it when it happens.
Barbara
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Huh. I do have to say that of those writers from the ancient and old blog days that joined Vox, Matt Yglesias is not my favorite. I think Ezra Klein is much better. There are others as well who are new to me.
Obvious Russian Troll
@kmeyerthelurker:
You have my sympathies–and to think I thought it was a pain in the ass just to get my late brother’s Facebook account to stop sending me birthday notifications.
Although it could be worse. I have a friend whose sister is deeply involved in the anti-abortion movement. The sister at one point was actively campaigning to get my friend fired–she called her employer and even customers that my friend dealt with.
Barbara
@raven: It may have similarities, but it isn’t the same.
kmeyerthelurker
@MJS: A lot of people use it only to stay in touch with people important to them. I won’t go near it, but for, well, a lot of “normies”, they dont much worry about things like putin & zuckerberg. They just wanna know how their sister in Albequerque is doing.
geg6
@SiubhanDuinne:
Boy, that BA or BS in phys ed really got him a first class edumacation, didn’t it? What substandard school did he go to?
trollhattan
@Frankensteinbeck:
Ah. IOW most folks.
Once I got over Reagan it took Dubya to get me following politics again and kind of never stopped since. I blame the internet.
PJ
@Feathers: Huh, so that where Elizabeth Bruenig got her schtick.
trollhattan
@Obvious Russian Troll:
Wait, what?
SFBayAreaGal
@raven: So 100% true
The Moar You Know
This is my only social media outlet. When I was gigging I had both a FB and Insta account. Horrifying. Especially Facebook. The open obvious constant manipulation of you and everyone on there was unbearable. And it’s designed to be addictive; I know many people who will sit there with a child tugging at them, desperately seeking some kind of attention, while they’re posting away on their phones. And so do all of you. I’d rather legalize heroin, something I’ve lost a few of my musician colleagues to over the years, than FB.
The few I stay in touch with post FB ask what I do since I’m not on there. It’s simple. I hang out with my dog. And my wife, when she is not on Facebook. Which isn’t often. That’s really deeply saddening to me, but she’s gotta do what she’s gotta do. I’ve said my piece and I’m not leaving her. Ball is in her court as they say.
PJ
@raven: Let me know when Balloon-Juice starts advocating genocide.
different-church-lady
Welp, all states have now been declared by new media. Trump scheduled to speak at 4PM.
Bill Arnold
I’m using Block Facebook on Chrome and Facebook Containers on Firefox, and other tools to block Facebook trackers. (And other trackers.) Brave has similar extensions loadout to Chrome.
Another Scott
@Baud: Yeah but, there are only so many hours in the day. Nobody has a right to demand that we read and pay attention to their stupid or dangerous ideas.
Ultimately, it’s up to each of us to make up our own minds.
This isn’t to say that elected representatives, judges, teachers, etc don’t have an obligation to fight stupidity – they obviously do. But we have no obligation to argue on the Internet or on Z’s or Jack’s walled gardens.
Cheers,
Scott.
Haroldo
@The Moar You Know:
What, no TalkBass
(If memory serves, bass is your instrument of choice. If not, my apologies.)
Baud
@PJ: I wonder if the networks will cut him off again.
PenAndKey
You’re right. Who can forget about all the pet and travel pictures?
As for the whole, “if you’re not paying you’re the product” sentiment? In a very limited way that’s true even here because the site has advertising to help pay for hosting costs but, by and large, small community sites can get away with actually being sales neutral as long as the hosts aren’t treating it as a commercial venture. This place isn’t a datamined-to-the-gills social network site so much as it’s a 00’s-era Geocities-style MMO guild hub.
trollhattan
Snowflake!
For the record, Rocklin is in a staunchly Republican and well-heeled part of the metroplex.
no comment
My husband is not a “normie,” but he is on FB regularly. He keeps track of friends, family members, and organizations like a local dog rescue group. On the other hand, he argues back at those who try to post talking points from Faux News or rightwing conspiracy theories. He will also eventually block people if he thinks they’ve gone too far.
I don’t know how arguments on FB affect their algorithms. (Is posting, ignoring, or blocking better?) But I read somewhere that online in general, there are more lurkers & people reading than participating. If those people never see any pushback of lies and conspiracies, then how do they know that others disagree? So even if you never change the minds of people you’re arguing with, you could place a seed of doubt in the minds of others that see the exchange. Or give hope to those that agree with you, but would never say anything in public.
I’m not arguing that everyone is obligated to push back — some people are better suited to it, and we all have limited energy & hours in the day — I’m just saying that sometimes taking a clear side is important.
WaterGirl
@trollhattan: What the hell are they thinking?
Spanky
@geg6: Arkansas State University, according to Wikipedia
ETA: “where he lettered in football as a safety for the Muleriders and played two years on the golf team.
ETA2: And while we’re on Wikipedia:
Kent
Yet somehow ads seem to follow me here.
germy
Looking forward to January
geg6
@Spanky:
Well…I will refrain from saying anything more in order to not insult anyone here who may have attended that institution.
Baud
@Another Scott:
Correct. But choices have consequences, and it’s possible one consequence is that bad ideas spread more easily.
Bill Arnold
@Kent:
You need to install at least tracker blockers and perhaps also ad blockers. You’re being tracked by the advertiser “ecosystem”.
Baud
@germy: We get to congratulate Joe and Kamala again!
WaterGirl
@different-church-lady: Do we think there’s a chance in hell that Trump will concede?
scav
@geg6: can’t really blame the river for a horse that refuses to drink, let alone one that spits it out later and claims to be unacquainted with water.
The Moar You Know
@Haroldo: I do play bass! I threw in the towel on them pretty recently. Also a no-gig social media casualty. COVID, so long as me and mine don’t get it, has been a godsend for my brain. I just dropped all of it.
TalkBass, like TDPRI, is a hot mess of utter bullshit, clueless newbs and ignorant motherfuckers posting like they know anything at all. There’s literally about three people on TB who know what they are talking about. TDPRI has about ten. Fun note: TDPRI is also the only site I’ve been banned from, for telling one of their mods he was an ignorant motherfucker and (presumably humiliating the dude) by backing it up with hard facts. Something about manufacturing, which I did a five year stint in and he did nothing at all. That was a long time ago.
I will give TB this; they mod decently well and enforce their no politics rule with a thoroughness that borders on OCD. I love that aspect of them. The problem is just most of their users are idiots, which is not their fault, but I moved past their level decades ago. So if you’re a beginner it’s a good place to go if you keep in mind that most people there don’t know what they’re talking about.
germy
Just what we need… more superspreader events. Are people so miserable staying home?
Amir Khalid
@Just Chuck:
Sorry, but Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei means National Socialist German Workers Party. No mention of Demokratie in the name.
Nobody in particular
That’s your browser, Kent. Try Firefox.
SFBayAreaGal
I enjoy being on Facebook. There are some interesting groups I belong to. I’m a Disney/Star Trek and Star Wars person. One group in particular is a fun gronp where you do a lot of sh*t posting about Star Trek. Other groups range from fabric groups, history groups, RV groups, fantasy pin groups, Disney grous, alliance groups, I could go on.
I’ve been able to hook up with distant relatives, friends I knew from my high school and Army days.
All the groups I belong to have administratos that keep a tight rein on what can be posted.
Gravenstone
@Just Chuck: You just know that if Bannon had suggested removing Zuck’s head from his shoulders, he’d have been banned post haste. Fucking mercenary piece of shit Zuckerberg is.
JPL
Except for election deniers, GA should have been called days ago. For those of us who live in GA, we knew that it was Joe’s state. We’re blue y’all
Amir Khalid
@WaterGirl:
Besides, Balloon Juice does too have pictures.
Baud
@JPL:
Congrats! Happy day!
I hope it sticks for the runoff.
debbie
@JPL:
Does this kill the recount?
JPL
@Amir Khalid: BTW The best pictures. ???
debbie
@germy:
He didn’t write that. “Organic”???
Baud
@debbie:
Agreed. Not his language.
JPL
@debbie: No, which is unfortunate, because the counties do not have the money for the recount, never mind the amount of overtime they will have to pay.
CaseyL
@germy: I’d like to know how many attendees at his rallies are locals, and how many are
DeadTrumpheads.Spanky
@WaterGirl: Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a shit.
Just Chuck
@Amir Khalid: Ah right, I somehow confused the ‘D’. Deutsche is way more obvious. Ah well, as Megan McArgleBargle would say, being wrong only proves my point. Or something :)
Nobody in particular
@SFBayAreaGal:
It’s not so much the platform itself, although I firmly believe all social networking platforms are going to be problematic – law is usually decades behind the technology – it is a tool that can be used for malignant purposes. And if it is supposed to “bring us all together…”
In military science, it becomes a force multiplier. Not long ago an old but trusty prop plane, the DC-3, used to drop tons of leaflets. Now, a “leaflet” gets into the metaphorical bloodstream intravenously. I’m reminded of the famous author and anthropologist, Ashley Montagu’s observation about television:
The principal contributor to loneliness in this country is television. What happens is that the family ‘gets together’ alone.
Ashley Montagu
germy
Oh God, no.
Haroldo
@The Moar You Know:
I find there are a few folks, especially in the amplifier section, who are worth my while. (Though a number of very good cabinet designers – especially – have just said, ‘I don’t need this grief,’ and have booked right on out.) The elections and attendant drama have resulted in me not logging in there too much. s
Here’s hoping the future finds you gigging again – though I don’t hold out too much hope for the near to medium term.
pluky
@WaterGirl:
Rather than humiliation, think sanction and potential disbarment.
germy
So presidential.
WaterGirl
@pluky: I would vote for those!
debbie
Step back with me to a time when presidents had … humanity.
PenAndKey
Near as I can tell, and I could be wrong, but Balloon Juice uses the Google Ads platform for it embedded ads. The key word there is embedded. BJ isn’t tracking anything beyond usability cookies for things like comment name persistence, but you can bet your last penny that Google is tracking you on every site you go to that has any affiliation with Google or the Google advertising platform. And that’s a large chunk of the web, specifically because they make it so easy to install on all the common hosting solutions like WordPress. It’s been a while since I’m run a blog back-end, but even being a little rusty I could probably get google ads up and running on a new site in under ten minutes.
Barbara
@germy: Being able to set expectations low enough for yourself frequently enough causes the media to fall into the trap of giving you credit for not doing unconscionable things. It drives me crazy.
Nobody in particular
@PenAndKey: Google is the culprit, or rather their AI, data mining, and algorithms.
Raven
@Nobody in particular: It’s always something
Roseanne Roseanna Danna
Kay
I don’t think we can have a normal inauguration with big crowds and such, which is a shame because I think people would really enjoy it. Also, I’m petty and we’d get a bigger crowd than Trumps crowd at his, and we won’t have to lie about it like he did.
I’m going to take the day off and watch on tv. I did that in ’08 – watched with my 2 older children which was great. I went in person in 2012 – fun- but cold. I wasn’t dressed properly. I think of DC as warm. Warmer.
Geoduck
@JPL: You’ve got a couple more elections coming up to really prove it!
trollhattan
@WaterGirl:
IDK but will guess they made their decision several weeks ago when new cases were at a lull and the county restriction classification was lower, and by the time it went into effect Stuff Happened.
But, why they, with the impending opening, did not consider the real time COVID data and new, more restrictive county status is a question I hope every parent is asking. This is like fighting a war based on how Life magazine is reporting it.
JPL
@Kay: I just hope they play YMCA some time during the day. I”ll be watching.
scav
Wouldn’t it be fun if Herr Donnie had to throw all his junk in a cardboard box and carry it himself out of the White House?
Omnes Omnibus
@CaseyL: Please provide a link supporting your claim that WI used lack of polling places for voter suppression.
JPL
@Geoduck: Stacey Abrams is amazing and who knows, she might do it again. This is all her. I’m as shocked as anyone.
CaseyL
@Omnes Omnibus: I’m going from memory, which could be wrong. I remember hearing that anywhere from 100K to 300K voters were unable to vote in 2016 – but don’t recall whether they’d been expunged from the voter rolls or only had a few polling stations, with faulty equipment.
Gin & Tonic
@JPL: I know very little, but it’s my understanding that Ms Abrams herself will not say that it’s “all her,” but that were other people/orgs at least as significant to this.
Martin
So, the fundamental problem with most social media which should be addressed before any other remedy is the identity problem.
Historically, government regulated identity. You can’t just haul off and call yourself someone else, because the DMV, the federal government, whoever won’t recognize that and issue you certificates of identity that reinforce your claim. Identity is a trust chain – way back when you were born your parents gave you an identity, registered it with the government, and everything derives from that act. Yes, you can change your identity (and people, particularly women, common do), but it’s a formal process with the government. Your postal address was the first regulated identity. Then your phone number, and your SS# from which your drivers license and passport and a bunch of other stuff derive.
The reason this matters is that it enforces accountability. If you go into a bank to open an account with the intention of doing bad things, the govt will know who opened that account, because invariably your identity is attached to it. It’s a big incentive to not do bad things, because you will get caught. This is why pot dispensaries can’t use the banking system. So there are occasions with downsides, but they they are usually minor and fleeting. Your phone number is another – it’s issued by a business but within pretty strict regulatory guidelines. When you call someone else, they know who is calling them.
If you look at the abuses that we struggle with – minor ones like phone spam where the caller falsifies their ID, that’s illegal, but also not enforced very often, and major ones like burying your identity behind a dozen shell companies for the purposes of money laundering (hello, Mr. President!) they are all routing around the same issue – that identity is regulated, and that regulation discourages criminality and bad actors.
That’s what needs to happen to Facebook et al first and foremost – regulation of identity. There are two ways in which this problem manifests – one, that russian state actors can pretend to be US citizens, which gives them a veneer of credibility when it comes to opinions about politics, but the other, is that without an identity check, you can create millions of fake accounts in minutes. Cost has always been one of the best barriers to protecting identity – either in dollars or time. if it took 2 days to create a Facebook account, none of this shit would be happening. You simply couldn’t flood the zone with the handful of accounts you were able to create.
And most social media do have a verified identity option, but it’s an option. It should be mandatory when a social media platform reaches a certain scale – Apple, Google, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, and a few others. Apple already effectively has this because their accounts are tied to physical hardware, so the cost of identity is already high, and in most cases it’s also tied to the phone number which is already regulated, but they should have to close up the gaps. This is why spam in Apple’s services is so much better than other platforms – it’s just harder to pull off.
Now, there are problems with this. I like not having my verified identity here. People may not realize this, but Martin is not my name – I chose that handle from a song. But it allows me to speak a bit more freely around my employer. When I started here, my job was one where people would seek out contact with me, because I was making admissions decisions. Random people would stop me in the grocery store to appeal on behalf of their kid – and so having a degree of anonymity was important. But BJ doesn’t have the kind of ability to spread misinformation, to scam people, or the mechanisms for virality and so on that Facebook does, so I think it’s fine that generally, we allow anonymity, until you hit the big global platforms.
The challenge with this is that postal addresses and phone numbers and other forms of identity are not global. They are regulated within national boundaries and then handed off between nations. In order to get online identity regulated, you’d have to convince enough other nations to issue similar regulation. The EU, Japan India would probably do the trick. Maybe China. I don’t envision these companies seeking to relocate to Russia or wherever to get around this – that would kill their platform.
I think this needs to be action #1. I don’t see any benefit to breaking them up in the sense that we historically have broken up companies. Maybe to spin off properties (require Facebook spin off Instagram into an independent company), but there are real benefits to the network effects that you get from the social graph, and any effort to break them up in other ways would destroy the utility they provide. That’s where all of their strength lies – if you want to reach everyone in your family, you have to go on the platform where all of your family resides, which constrains your market choices. The next step would be to mandate interchange of information between platforms, and easy mechanisms for doing that.
mrmoshpotato
Totally. Do it! Rub his fucking fascist orange face in it!
Fuck their feelings!
Omnes Omnibus
@CaseyL: The issue was voter ID which is its own form of voter suppression.
Martin
@Gin & Tonic: It would be actively counterproductive for her to say it’s all her. Her view is quite clearly that this is a collective action problem – that *everyone* has to be empowered to bring about change through voting, and communicating with others. She’s just the coordinator of that effort. (Contrast this to how we’d be past Covid if we could convince everyone to wear a mask and social distance – same type of problem but lacking the leadership).
That’s not to diminish her role in this, it’s brilliant and powerful work, but it only works if you give credit to the leaves on the tree for doing the work, because at the end of the day, that’s where the change is coming from.
Brachiator
@Calouste:
Wow. This is a big fucking deal.
I read a story earlier this morning that he was going to leave at the end of the year. But to see him walking out of Number 10 today, well, this was tremendous.
Now, if they can only find a way to get rid of Boris Johnson…
JPL
@Gin & Tonic: Today I mentioned to one of my sons that I should have seen at least my district turning. I door knock for local elections, and the demographics were changing in the district the first time Ossoff ran for house. Even though he lost, the change continued. The burbs around Atlanta are becoming solidly blue, and that’s a good thing. My area was older and as they died off, younger people purchased here.
Kay
@mrmoshpotato:
There’s a huge difference between one term Presidents and two term Presidents and Biden knows it and Obama knows it and Trump knows it. One term is a rejection of what people have come to know, where just not getting elected the first time you can still tell yourself “they would have liked me”.
Trump got the most humiliating result. We tried him and rejected him.
zhena gogolia
@mrmoshpotato:
I don’t want him to. That’s not what I voted for.
catclub
FTFY ;)
mrmoshpotato
@Gin & Tonic:
She wouldn’t. Even if it was just Fair Fight with the GOTV effort (it wasn’t), she’s must too gracious of a person to claim credit.
Anotherlurker
@JanieM: I will!
Martin
@Kay: You get a 2nd term simply by doing the job competently. It’s like any other job – you don’t need to be exceptional to keep a job – you just need to not suck and fuck it up.
Just Chuck
@Martin: Apple IDs are not at all tied to hardware. Anyone with email and a phone can sign up for an apple ID. https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204316#web
Raven
@Martin: Now that’s an explanation with some meat on it!
Geoduck
The way things are going with Brexit, that may happen sooner rather than later. Not that his replacement is likely to be any better.
Kay
@mrmoshpotato:
If Biden really wants to get Trump and do it in a way that can’t be criticized, he should say “I really consider this Obama’s third term”
He should say it whether he believes it or not. Just for fun. Joe Biden didn’t drive these people round the bend. Obama did.
Raven
@Just Chuck: a phone is hardware
trollhattan
@Calouste:
Saw that. Is Tony Jay in the house for a backgrounder? He’s definitely a shitheel:
Will his departure lead to different tactics from BoJo?
MomSense
Zuckerberg has been a known asshole since FaceMash.
Just Chuck
@Raven: I should have been clearer, all one needs is a phone number. Any flip phone will work, and you don’t even need that.
Kay
@Martin:
Exactly. Not a real rejection if you never got picked in the first place!
“I woulda been GREAT” You know Mitt Romney thinks that. He’s a little sad for us, that we missed out.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
High on his own supply, common Silicon Valley problem. It’s like Musk thinking his opinion on the pandemic means jack because he is good at making electric cars.
Mary G
@JPL:
JPL
@Mary G: Sweet!
mrmoshpotato
@Kay: Well, it was Obama’s skin color that drove a bunch of racists around the Trump trash bend, but yes.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Kay: Why should Biden waste any time on Trump beyond seeing to it that Trump is prosecuted for any major crimes he did? Trump’s going to torture himself far better than the rest of us can. Not to mention GW hanging around with Obama and Clinton’s as part of the ex-presidents club says it all what Trump behavior has him shut out of.
mrmoshpotato
@Kay:
LOL Ugh. Vulture (unfair to scavengers) capitalist and VP Ayn Rand fan boi.
Just Chuck
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: Biden does not possess the political capital to prosecute T himself. 70 million MAGAts will make the country ungovernable if so. Even if they can’t actually do anything about the prosecution, they’d be extra-motivated to fuck with everything else on the domestic agenda at a local level.
Individual states on the other hand aren’t going to care so much, and there’s a few states AGs who are champing at the bit to put the hurt on T.
mrmoshpotato
@zhena gogolia: Fair enough. I’m not a gracious winner after four years of Nazi trash.
Hello Executive “Fuck Trump!” orders!
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@germy: So Trump is going to come out and suck himself off in public over a vaccine that might work. Lovely.
CaseyL
@Omnes Omnibus: And WI voted by mail, or at least a lot of people did. Is voter ID still an issue when people VBM? (Honest question; every state has its own process for verifying absentee ballots.)
Just Chuck
@mrmoshpotato: Still would have been a better president than T. Of course, so would Inanimate Carbon Rod.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Biden drove a different group of people around the bend
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Just Chuck: Oh it can be done; have the charges publicly examined in the House on National TV so there is no doubt in anyone’s mind that Donny Dumbass did it. But that assumes Trump’s crimes are worth that kind of effort with things like pandemic going on. If It’s just money crimes then the states, if it’s it turns out it was Trump was conspiring with the Russians to kill US service personal then then it’s worth it.
Nobody in particular
@Raven: It always is. I saw your comment on this or another thread about Tommy Tuberville (sic). (That’s how I spell it.)
We went to war to free Europe from Socialism. After the shock wore off, I could only shake my head. Then I realized this is a result of years of ignorance and propaganda. Everyone knows Nazis were socialists, right? “Socialism Bad! Capitalism Good!”
Most people get very uncomfortable about the fact America was more “socialist” – or what they think is “socialism” – at its founding then their own ignorance of history permits them to see. But all Liberals and Democrats are Socialists in their narrative so truth and facts be damned. One thing I do know is that Nazism killed liberals and socialists and anyone who believed democracy was important. Sound like any political party you are familiar with? Fascism is easy to label and target, but all of a sudden, that term is off bounds on MSNBC, CNN. Wingnut television uses it to describe antifascists. That makes wingnut sense, I suppose. The truth is many of the founders were what Tuberville would call socialists. Back then it was called Agrarian Justice, very American, and you can go to this website to see exemplars.
https://www.ssa.gov/history/tpaine3.html
https://www.ssa.gov/history/paine4.html
All of this before Karl Marx was even born.
What is even more astonishing, at least to me, is the fact that that it could be said that Ben Franklin’s contribution to the foundational tenet of what later became Marxism, was a 1729 paper he published in 1731 urging adoption of the labor theory of value, almost 90 years before Marx was born. Marx mentions this in his notes on commodities. Franklin is not only the Grandfather of America, (Founding Brothers, Joe Ellis, great book) he is the Godfather of Marxism. But “socialism” or agrarian justice, was the contribution of Robert Owen, again, before Marx was born. The kicker is, Forrest MacDonaldthe foremost distinguished, and honest scholar on the period, a paleocon who passed away after was “elected,” begrudgingly agrees. And by his words, I stand. It’s a short read.
https://oll.libertyfund.org/pages/forrest-mcdonald-the-founding-fathers-and-the-economic-order
So for Tommy Tuberville to correct, it was one faction of socialists rescuing a group of fascists from other socialists, or something. This is why I’m a Georgist. And over 100 years ago, most Americans were leaning that way. Wiped from history, unless you like hunting for truffles.
Ruckus
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
The problem with FB in trying to quit is that your login and history purposely is not deleted, so that you can “come back,” but the real reason is that zuck is making money off you. If you login again everything is still there and working. Now supposedly no one can see your account as long as you don’t log back in. And eventually everything may be deleted. I wouldn’t hold my breath.
Just Chuck
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: Trying T in terms of House hearings would certainly be better, and I do hope there’s a post-presidential commission that does so. Call me cynical but I’m not holding my breath for even that. They won’t actually say “look forward, not back” this time, and they might collect a scalp or two, but …
Fuck it, I don’t want to be gloomy right now.
mrmoshpotato
Biden/Harris over 78 million votes with 5 million votes still to be counted. ??
Martin
@Just Chuck: Right, but that doesn’t often happen. Like I said, there are loopholes but 99% of IDs are tied to hardware. That’s the ‘slowing function’ I was referring to.
Facebook is dangerous because you can spin up thousands of new identities in seconds thanks to their APIs for doing so. That part needs to end. Identity needs to be hard.
Regarding the obvious parallel with voter id in that last statement, voter id is different because the state knows your id, and knows you are a resident but makes it arbitrarily hard to prove back to them. Establishing residency is hard, and it should be (utility bill, etc.) but once established it should be easy to prove (in the case of Facebook, it’s just providing your password – something you have control over).
Just Chuck
@Ruckus: Your account does get permanently deleted a month after you request it. Backups are forever of course, but given the costs of spinning those up, I doubt they expose those to data mining… but I suppose a high-enough-paying customer can buy anything when the vendor has no morality.
Appropriately enough, my account was permanently deleted on July 4.
Betty Cracker
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: I hope that’s true — that Trump is excluded from important civic events going forward. It’s only fair. Bad president or good, you have to earn that by participating, and Trump didn’t participate. He didn’t do the larger job of being president, and he didn’t do the smaller civic rites either. Like conceding the fucking race.
I’d bet a substantial sum Trump will refuse to participate in the inauguration in any way, and that should be the final word. He doesn’t get to play ex-president. If Obama could countenance the insufferable orange cockwaffle and treat him and his horrid birther wife civilly prior to inauguration, if Bill and Hillary Clinton could suck it up and attend the 2016 inauguration, Trump’s refusal should be taken as a sign that he’s not qualified going forward.
Martin
@Raven: No, he’s right, anyone can get an ID without buying an Apple product, but because so much of the service infrastructure that Apple uses ties it to hardware at some point, it’s not terribly useful to do this. Every Apple user knows the difference between a blue bubble and a green one. And you don’t need to get the system perfect – just good enough that the bad actors can’t really do any real harm. Facebook has purged over a billion fake identities. It’s a massive problem there and should never be allowed to get remotely close to that.
Brachiator
@Martin:
Well, no, this is just plain wrong. There were places, some formal, some informal, where identities were recorded, but this was not the same thing as regulation. And often this was, in the West, the Church, maybe a hospital, not a government agency.
And often even when they became official documents, a lot of people did not even have birth certificates.
The importance of having an identifiable name varied with social class.
And the Queen of England, BTW, does not have a passport.
People have changed their names for various reasons. Some actors have legally changed their names to their “stage names,” others have not.
This gets interesting, but I will cut to the chase. Because cellphones have become almost central to our lives, we often keep the same number even when we move. You used to get a new phone number when you moved to a different part of the city. But phone numbers, and SSNs, which were originally not to be used as an ID number, have become ID numbers. And the use of phone numbers as a kind of ID came about without government regulation.
The problem is that some people prefer, and some people absolutely require anonymity. For some people, it may be a matter of life or death. And some authoritarian governments require that people record their real identities precisely so that they can stifle dissent.
This is also why governments hate encryption and are demanding backdoors and access with a warrant. This is also why the US government has insidious rules that will punish companies that let you know that the government is tracking you.
The problem is that sometimes “bad things” are indisputable; but other times “bad” is very much a matter of opinion or perspective.
Huh? What? The absurd situation is that legal weed is still illegal in the eyes of the fed.
This might slow things down, a little, but it is not much of an obstacle.
And I don’t know how you protect people who need anonymity.
The EU and other agencies fight for a person’s right to be forgotten. Don’t people also have a right not to be permanently registered?
Ruckus
@Betty Cracker:
I did the same thing on FB. Only respond to friends I agreed with and mostly didn’t get conservative crap from anyone. Mostly.
Brachiator
@Nobody in particular:
This is a lie. I didn’t even bother with the rest of your post.
Just Chuck
@Martin: Advertisers probably aren’t too jazzed about being sold on a userbase where half of it is a mirage…
Martin
@Ruckus: They can’t actually delete it, if I understand this correctly (I have a friend who does this stuff for Facebook).
The law enforcement extensions that pretty much all of the social media companies have put in place (which whatshisname misrepresented) will still have it. Basically those extensions create a kind of law enforcement sandbox that they can log into which replicates your account and actions. So your information may be deleted from the public Facebook space, but it will be preserved for the law enforcement one, and presumably they can restore the public space from the law enforcement one.
mrmoshpotato
@Just Chuck:
I think any of these Rethuglican shitpiles would’ve committed the same atrocities, but kept quiet about it. Mitt is Mr. “Self deportation” remember.
He might not have let a pandemic run rampant, but he would’ve fucked social programs while giving tax cuts to the rich. (It’s the Rethuglican shitpile way!)
Martin
@Just Chuck: I don’t think they mind too much because these accounts don’t interact with the platform like the other users do. They never actually view a page, they just spam content through the APIs, so that when you view their spam, you still get an ad and you still view that ad.
Nobody in particular
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
The nice thing about Substack is that even though it won’t go away, it is easily ignored.
Just Chuck
@mrmoshpotato: Not saying Romney would have been a good president, just saying he probably wasn’t an outright traitor.
Calouste
@Brachiator: That was a quote from the Senator-elect from Alabama.
Nobody in particular
@Brachiator: No foul, no harm.
scav
@trollhattan: Don’t know if anything will actually change from his flobjobulous stumblemumble mussedhair magnificence. (How would they tell? a sudden lack of uturns?) Besides, the walk of shame is a bit of a PR gesture (however grand to watch). “Cummings and Cain will continue to work for Downing Street until mid-December, with one source saying Cummings would be ‘working from home for six weeks’.” (guard)
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Just Chuck: It’s really hard to believe the House won’t do committee hearings on what the Trump administration was really up to just simply sort things out because the Trump admin is so crappy about documenting what they do.
mrmoshpotato
@Just Chuck: Backup systems these days and redundancy (especially with FuckZace’s bankroll) aren’t necessarily offline. Tapes don’t need to be used anymore for deep archives.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
THe Beast about to take the podium on the White House lawn
Sycophants are carefully spaced.
It only took three WH super spreader events.
If I remember the big Crayola pack I used to beg my mom for ever September, the one with the sharpener!, he is Burnt Umber today
LuciaMia
Trump speaks! I’ve got the mute on.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Calouste: Ah, I see, I am sure the Germans, French, Italians and British are shocked to find themselves liberate from Socialism.
LuciaMia
That damn sharpener never worked right!
Just Chuck
@mrmoshpotato: FB uses high-density blu-rays for backups. They have racks and racks of custom-made disc-library robots for that. The data density is enormous, but the speed is pretty slow (then again, tapes are even slower).
Brachiator
@trollhattan:
Some people thought that Cummings was BoJo’s brain. The hand up the back of the puppet.
There are a couple of UK pundits I follow who have been caught totally unawares by this. One guy had posted the speculation that Cummings would hold on until the end of the year.
Even the conservative media missed this. There were a lot of stories about Peter Sutcliffe, the infamous Yorkshire Ripper, who died of Covid-19.
There’s a lot a scrambling to get figure out why Cummings left before his time, and what might happen next.
Now if we could only get rid of Trump a little early.
ETA: I don’t think that the BBC Global News podcast has caught up with the Cummings story yet. Good stuff at the main BBC News site.
germy
He says he bypassed the pesky FDA with their slowpoke regulations…
germy
No vaccine for Cuomo or NYers. He’s too fussy about safety.
zzyzx
@germy: thank you for watching so I don’t have to!
Martin
@Brachiator: I’m using historically in internet timeframes – the last century vs the last 3 decades. The US started regulating identity in the 19th century in various piecemeal ways.
Phone numbers are regulated – highly regulated – in terms of the name space, how area codes and prefixes tie to geographic locations, etc. There are strict requirements for maintaining that data and giving it back or giving access to the federal government, some under wiretap/national security laws, some under other laws. IOW, you cannot get an arbitrary phone number assigned to you as an identifier, and the carriers can’t do that either. Your best option is to use a prepaid number, but those are limited by law as well.
My comment regarding dispensaries has to do with the fact that you can’t use the banking system anonymously. If you could create an anonymous bank account, you could as a dispensary owner use the banking system. But that is not allowed, by law.
There are lots of ways to protect people who need anonymity. And I was clear to note that I’m not arguing for universal verified identity, only to those services that have such a national/global reach that they have become defacto national infrastructure. I’m trying to envision a scenario in which someone who had to maintain anonymity for valid purposes also had to post on Facebook, and I can’t think of one. I would also note this is exactly who ‘Q’ claims to be, as if some high ranking intelligence person would resort to Facebook to reveal government plots.
mrmoshpotato
@Just Chuck:
Agreed. Mittens wouldn’t have been a Soviet shitpile mobster.
Conman? Well, they call themselves Republicans. “Tax cuts for the rich solve everything!”
Nobody in particular
@Martin: The only thing that destroys matter is anti-matter. The odds are that every breath each one of us takes contains at least one molecule of Julius Ceasar’s dying breath. And everything else. Boggles the mind.
Ecology? What’s that?
https://www.sciencefocus.com/planet-earth/are-we-really-breathing-caesars-last-breath/
debbie
@germy:
Are you watching? Someone on FB says he’s let his hair go gray.
germy
@debbie:
Yes, it’s gray.
No lockdown during his administration. He suggests it hasn’t been decided who the next administration will be.
germy
My local news station just cut away.
Brachiator
@Nobody in particular:
Apologies for not just jumping to a conclusion, but for running and leaping and diving in using the Pike position.
AWOL
@debbie: He’s gray, snorting warped speed, bullshitting, and not conceding.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@germy: And what does the manufacturer say about that? I can’t imaging them holding the bag of the inevitable lawsuits for a lame duck.
mrmoshpotato
@Just Chuck: Ah yeah. I remember reading about that.
No Raiders of the Lost Ark searching for them.
(Maybe they should punch themselves for being Nazis though.)
Kay
Atlanta. What a good idea.
rikyrah
Uh huh
Uh huh ?
Quinerly
@debbie: hair is gray. He was having breathing problems, imo. Affect was flat. Seemed a bit drugged out to me. Seemed heavier/bloated.
J R in WV
@Cheryl Rofer:
Something very wrong there, just look at his eyes!!!
If calling for the beheading of admired scientists isn’t alarming to him, what would be?
I think he’s got some of what Stephen Miller (of White House infamy) had got; extreme fascist leanings.
Only with more greed.
IIRC he basically stole that which became Facebook from College Roomies who had the skills to write the code to exchange opinions on the hotness of female college students, because he is criminally greedy.
And that obviously skeezy platform turned into major support for American Fascism, hurray!! What a relief it was…
Gin & Tonic
@Martin: X.500
debbie
@Quinerly:
Has he even left his quarters since playing golf last weekend? That’s a horrible idea for someone as out of shape as he is.
Kay
Unprecedented revolt. Good for them. Destroy his reputation.
debbie
@AWOL:
@germy:
He’ll never get his own network with gray hair! Media execs are such ageists!
mrmoshpotato
@germy:
“You traitorous orange bitch! You’re a loser in the electoral college, and a 5-million-vote loser and growing!”
Nobody in particular
I may be crazy, but I don’t make shit up. And if you have a degree in Economics you’ll never figure it out, unless you are a heterodox economist. Very few of them. This is foundational with respect to economic justice.
And Robert Owen
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Owen
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1859/critique-pol-economy/ch01a.htm
Kay
@mrmoshpotato:
And the whole Republican Party enthusiastically supports this, because they’re afraid of him. Refuse to defend the country from him- too scared.
mrmoshpotato
@AWOL:
It would be sad if he weren’t such a traitorous, orange, racist, fascistic, pussy-grabbing, Soviet shitpile mobster conman manbaby.
Kay
Perfect response. They’re really good at this.
germy
mrmoshpotato
@rikyrah: Points off for forgetting the oldie, but never goodie, calling Hillary a corporate whore.
These stupid kids are really bad at messaging.
Brachiator
@Martin:
Again, this is more about recording identity than regulating identity.
It is still a game, for example, for teens to go to certain places in Los Angeles to get fake IDs so that they can drink. Of course, maybe a lot less need for this during the pandemic.
I guess. I remember when companies and other entities would hoard phone numbers. Getting a new phone number when you buy a phone seems kinda weird and haphazard, and an emergency phone I bought seems to think that I am Chinese, in terms of the spam calls I get.
This is just a bad example. Complicated issue.
There is no real anonymity on the Internet. And I know people who need to zealously guard their privacy for various reasons, but who can testify that protection is weak against someone dedicated to breach defenses.
Again, the problem is that I don’t trust that FB could reasonably verify or protect anyone’s identity.
Hell, there is a problem in which people who do not use FB, but show up in posts by their friends who are on FB, get swept up into FB’s web.
Also, what do we do about employers who might demand information about all a new hire’s social media accounts?
J R in WV
@Steve in the ATL:
Flagstaff is a university town in tree covered mountains. When we visited there on our way to the Grand Canyon, we were favorably impressed. Very outdoors oriented with mostly liberal folks from all over the world.
Will confess we were only there a couple of days, but it was really nice. The University appears to be fabulous, one of our close friends graduated there. Forestry…
mrmoshpotato
@Kay: Good! Bill Barr can get fucked.
Nobody in particular
@Brachiator: That sounds just like me. No sweat.
Omnes Omnibus
@CaseyL: People would need to provide an ID to get an absentee ballot. WI has had vote by mail for years. The only issue this year was the sheen volume of them.
debbie
@Kay:
I think they’re really afraid of his supporters because they know they’ll vote against them if they stray from supporting Trump.
Quinerly
@debbie: don’t know if he has left in a week.
Suit seemed more ill-fitting than usual. Hair actually better. I’m honest.
Sab
Ha ha. Did not see who did it, but somebody ripped the across the street neighbor’s Trump sign up from the devil’s strip and hurled it at her house. So now it is lying near her front door.
mrmoshpotato
@Kay:
And they take a dump on their oaths of office.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@rikyrah: @mrmoshpotato: I can’t quite make those out. Do they include Nancy Pelosi’s neoliberal ice cream?
Bill Arnold
@Martin:
Banning anonymity means banning dissent including political dissent entirely for many users. Especially those in parts of the world where the government is doing the suppression of dissent, rather than private individuals and organizations that simply try to get people fired and/or shunned and/or threatened with death. In some jurisdictions of the world, it’s a life or death choice.
(I’m using my real name here. (It’s a common name, but a few narrowers will find me.) Most are hiding behind a nym. Why are they hiding?)
Now, a rate limiter on making new accounts would be helpful. Twitter, for instance, does require that you be able to receive a text message once, though they’ve been on-and-off spotty about workarounds for this that don’t involve an actual (could be burner) phone. A delay might be helpful as well.
Twitter Activist Security – Guidelines for safer resistance (thaddeus t. grugq, Jan 30, 2017)
zhena gogolia
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Bill Arnold:
I’m wanted in thirty-seven states and eight foreign countries. Old bar tabs and international money-laundering. If the Prince of Lichtenstein ever finds me, of the manager of the Little Rock Airport Capital Grille, death will be a blessed relief
prostratedragon
@germy: Down in the comments to Rupar’s thread there’s a link to a running countdown clock till Jan. 20. They use 00:01 EST or something as their endpoint; I’ve been using 12:00 since the term begins at noon. If you have R, it’s > inaug <- "2021-01-20 12:00 EST" ; difftime(inaug, Sys.time(), units = "secs"). I suppose I could make a shiny app that runs, and might do so.
Nobody in particular
@mrmoshpotato:
Republicans, if you mean the original lower case “r” variety who founded the party to elect the likes of Lincoln and the last one of the actual republicans, TR – had an ideology. Republicanism is an ideology and still practiced by The Irish Republican Party, socialist since its founding in 1896-7. I’ve come to the conclusion that actual republican ideology has more in common with socialism, historically. I am aware I tend to harp on this but that’s because I feel it very important to distinguish between the founding ideology and a political party. My best guess is that through rampant entryism into the only game in town for them, the struggling GOP – who has infiltrated the party is quite obvious. Vulgar libertarians and Randroid idiots, grifters, oligarchs, and pedophiles. IOW, Authoritarians.
Molly Ivins loved Thayer.
And I realize this is anachronistic:
“The opposite of virtue was vice, meaning effeminacy, or a love of luxury.”
But think of Trump and Romney as “effeminate.” I do.
J R in WV
@Obvious Russian Troll:
I think that’s probably a civil tort, actionable. That might cause RWNJ sister to keep her fuqn distance from your friend, the loss of a whole bunch of money…
zhena gogolia
The use of the bald eagle toward the end of this video is excellent.
Geminid
@rikyrah: That Liz Burgh does some good reporting. I don’t much like the Justice Democrats, but I do credit them for my finding this blog. I looked up a post about them by some cat named Adam Silverman, on the oddly named Balloon Juice, and got hooked.
Nobody in particular
@mrmoshpotato:
Neoliberal shill is best. And ironic.
Frankensteinbeck
@debbie:
He’s not asking that much. Being a sore loser, questioning the legitimacy of every Democrat, and even refusing to concede and fighting election results in court are Republican traditions. Trump is taking it to an embarrassing extreme, not doing anything anti-Republican. Story of his presidency, really.
mrmoshpotato
@Nobody in particular: That’s definitely a capital “R.”
catclub
For a western arid version of tree-covered. It ain’t Vermont
catclub
make a real account and a burner account?
Sister Golden Bear
@Martin: Forcing verified identities to be used on social media poses real problems for some trans people who aren’t publicly out yet, as well as others. E.g. burlesque performers who need to keep their performer names separate from their legal names. There was at least one performer fired from her teaching job after she was outed during Facebook’s enforcement of it’s “real names” policy a few years ago—which became a tool for right-wing types to abuse the process. e.g. a number Native America activists had their accounts suspended because Facebook decided their names didn’t sound “real.”
mrmoshpotato
@zhena gogolia: Someone needs to ask Rick how his Republican party became such a pile of shit, and how he’s kept himself busy over the past 40 years.
Tony Jay
@trollhattan:
It’s definitely a shocker, more the speed and velocity of the exit than anything else. There were always the competing narratives out there. That Cummings was eager to get out of his Downing Street role now that his project to cut the UK loose from the EU was set in stone, but before the actual calamity of leaving with no agreed deals on ANYTHING AT ALL became so clear that even the flag-licking hordes of Nash’nihilist Brexiteers would be looking for someone to blame, so probably around Christmas. The other theory was that he was always going to sit on Johnson’s shoulder because he had a long term project to redefine the entire Civil Service and the role of national Government according to his Teenage Blogposting Edgelord Masterplan for Futuresexy Dataweaving or some such incomprehensible shit.
The spin is that Johnson forced out Cummings and his equally weird looking mate Cain (the Communications Chief who was just offered the Chief of Staff role) because an investigation had revealed they were briefing against Johnson’s girlfriend (Carrie Symonds, the former Tory Communications Chief and Flobalob’s latest babymomma) and they lied to him about it. I call bullshit. No way Johnson shows any kind of backbone, however tightly Symonds crosses her legs and wags her finger. Quite apart from the fact that that’s not how democratic Governments are supposed to operate FFS, he wanted Cain as his closest political door-warden up to yesterday. Some domestic flare-up isn’t going to have convinced him to do a 180 unless there was something much bigger in the mix.
Frankly I think Joe Biden had something to do with it. Johnson’s whole justification for being Tory leader was already holed beneath the waterline by last week’s US Election. No Trump, no mirage of a “fantabulous trade deal” to gull the weak-minded with, no sham of an argument to explain why a No-Deal Brexit would be fine and dandy. He spoke to Joe on the phone and I wouldn’t be surprised if he was told in no uncertain terms that the United States would be pushing back on Russian interference on every front – including its support for far-Right, illiberal political parties across Europe and their attempts to undermine the EU. Hint, hint.
Johnson is deep in a faecal sinkhole of his own making. He’s literally got days to arrange the biggest u-turn of his career and negotiate some kind of humiliating accommodation with the EU that leaves the Good Friday Agreement and the Irish border settlement intact. He can’t do that with the masterminds of Vote Leave as his closest advisors, no matter how reliant he himself is on them for brainwork. It’s going to blow a huge hole right through the middle of the Tory Party, but I can’t see any other way out for him.
Next week should be ‘interesting’.
D Gardner
@Van Buren:
Make All Guillotines Active
mrmoshpotato
I hope for her trial, guilty verdict and sentence to death by hanging.
karen marie
@Amir Khalid: They’re fucking morons. They think it’s how you spell “parlor.”
ninja3000
I’m 67 years old. On my deathbed — hopefully, many years from now — I will be able to truthfully say that I never ate food from McDonalds and I have never even looked at Facebook.
Brachiator
@Tony Jay:
Who’s the current chief of staff and what happened to that person?
I saw stories that Symonds had some role in Cummings ouster. Seemed dumb. But I also didn’t know much about her prior job for the Conservative Party. Thought she was just a former pole dancer (not that there’s anything wrong with that).
And up until recently, there have been self-important Tories insulting Biden because he has Irish roots, and Kamala Harris because of her Indian heritage. And these are the dopes who blast Labour for its supposed bigotry.
And I like to think that during a congratulatory phone call, Biden slipped in “Hey Boris, I remember when you insulted my main man, Obama. What you got to say now, punk?”
I’ve also heard that Boris Johnson promised the ERG, the 1922 Committee and Jacob Rees-Mogg’s nanny that he would deliver a no deal BREXIT.
Even Houdini’s ghost is looking to see if Johnson escapes from this self-imposed trap.
Ruckus
@different-church-lady:
How is modern life actually that much different than say 100 years ago for most people?
Yes the vast majority didn’t have a car or utilities or quite possibly running water. But the reality is that most of us worked harder and minorities were treated worse and had fewer rights but past that, how was life really all that different?
Uncle Cosmo
@J R in WV: Spent two days in “Flag” on my way through the Mountain West about 15 years ago. Loved it. A university, not one but two astronomical observatories, 20 degrees cooler than Phoenix in summer, closest decent-size burg to the Grand Canyon (so visitors from all over the world stay there). About the same population as FantaSe but without the price & pretention & architectural straitjacket. (I loathes me some adobe. Why in the world would anyone want to build a $1M home and then make it look from the outside as if it had walls of mud?) Seriously considered looking into buying some real estate round about “Flag.”
Tony Jay
@Brachiator:
I don’t think the role has officially been filled since May left office. Cummings basically controlled most stuff alongside Cain, and it was Johnson’s decision to respond to the consistent complaint that he (disorganised lazy fuck that he is) desperately needed someone coordinating the whole show by choosing the ferociously loyal Cain that blew the whole thing up.
Somehow I feel there’s another subtle zeitgeist change going on behind the scenes. Cain’s ‘Vote Leave’ past was a fuck you too far now that the most important country in the world has told its own gobshite-in-chief to get lost. The meerkats are sniffing the air and guessing that obnoxious triumphalism might not be selling too well next year. Which is good, I suppose.
Brachiator
@Tony Jay:
Thanks very much for filling in this detail.
This certainly appears to be unexpected. News stories I saw quickly went from “hints of internal problems” to the wonderful sight of Cummings walking out of Number 10 with a box in his hands.
Reminded me of the comedy series “The Thick Of It.”
2liberal
My sister died some years ago and her account was deactivated. Did you try to deactivate it, or delete it?
debbie
@West of the Rockies:
I believe that has turned out not to be true. Alas!
cain
@Just Chuck:
How weird.. you’d think they would use streaming tapes which is a lot more efficient.
I work with the FB people from time to time. I should ask them whenever this pandemic opens up.
One of my friends used to work for FB, his salary? 1 million a year. He left because of principles. That’s how FB works, they get all the brains and that brain power is harnessed to fuck over countries.
cain
@Tony Jay:
Thanks for this – I really love this analysis of British politics. I’m really hoping that we can keep UK with the EU when all is said and done. It’s for the best.
ETA: fuck the Tories and to some lesser extent Labour