On January 6th 2021, the US Congress will officially declare the winner of the 2020 presidential election. Congress always does that, every four years after a presidential election. It is almost always a formality. But not in 1877, and maybe not in 2021.
Key dates of the 2020 election:
- November 3rd: Election Day: citizens vote for president. This is known as the popular vote. Democrat Joe Biden won 81,281,888 votes, Republican President Donald Trump won 74,223,251 votes. Biden won by 7 million votes or 4.1 percentage points.
- December 14th: the Electoral College votes. In nearly all cases, subject to state law, the electors in each state vote for whoever won the popular vote in their state (or congressional district, in Maine and Nebraska). Each state gets as many Electoral College votes as it has votes in Congress. DC gets 3, the minimum. Biden won 306 to Trump’s 232.
- January 6th: Congress meets at one o’clock (18:00 GMT), the vice president presides and has the Electoral College vote counted and then officially declares the winner. It takes less than an hour – unless there are challenges! If there are, they have only two weeks to sort it out:
- January 20th: Inauguration Day: the president is sworn in at noon (17:00 GMT). If no new president has been chosen, the Speaker of the House of Representatives (currently Nancy Pelosi, pictured below) becomes the acting president.
Hanging chads: In the 2000 election the winner in Florida was disputed and had to be determined by the Supreme Court. That took place before the Electoral College voted. The rest of the process went off without a hitch.
In 1877 three states – Florida, Louisiana and South Carolina – sent in more than one set of Electoral College votes. So Congress had to decide which ones were the “real” ones. At their counterpart of the January 6th session (then held in March), the Republican-controlled Congress appointed a Republican-majority committee to sort it out – and so Rutherford B. Hayes, the Republican candidate, won, defeating Samuel Tilden, who had won the popular vote by 3.0 percentage points. In the backroom deals made to push that through, Republicans abandoned Southern Blacks, paving the way for Jim Crow.
In 2021, President Trump has been crying voter fraud but has been unable to prove it in court. Despite that, some of his loyalists in Congress have promised to challenge the election on January 6th! All you need to challenge to a state’s Electoral College vote is one person from each house of Congress, one senator and one representative. Likely to be challenged are the Electoral College vote in Arizona, Georgia, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, states that Joe Biden narrowly won. Each challenge is followed by up to two hours of debate in each house. But to throw out a state’s vote, you need a majority in both houses.
Republicans do not have the votes to do that on their own – and Democrats are unlikely to vote to throw out states Biden won. But it could draw battle lines within the Republican Party between pro and anti Trump camps.
– Abagond, 2021.
Sources: Google Images; PolitiFact; “Fraud of the Century” (2003) by Roy Morris, Jr.
Update (January 7th, 04:48 GMT): This led to a riot. A mob, incited by President Trump to march on the Capitol building and show their “strength”, did so and stormed the Capitol! Four are reported dead so far, 50 arrested. The police, who are generally pro-Trump, did little to stop it and only regained control hours later.
An early YouGov opinion poll shows that 45% of Republicans in the country at large support the storming of the Capitol.
Congress has resumed the count of the Electoral College vote. Arizona’s vote was challenged. The challenge failed. In the Senate only 12% of Republicans voted to throw out Arizona’s vote, but in the House, 58% of Republicans did. And that was after the riot!
Update (January 7th, 09:24 GMT): A challenge against Pennsylvania also failed. All the Electoral College votes have now been counted and Joe Biden officially declared the winner. Trump has promised a peaceful transfer of power.
See also:
550
Who knew this would be an action-adventure show today?
White supremacists have been bad-mouthing Black folk for decades for non-violent protests. Peaceful marches and rallies were described as “riots”. Taking a knee for murdered Black victims of police violence was described as “disrespecting the flag”. Black people describing our view of our own lives was described as “hatred” against Euro-Americans.
What a bunch of hoodlums! Today they really showed their backsides at the nation’s capital. Storming Capitol Hill. Trying to break into the House Chambers. Trashing congressional offices. Talk about White Privilege in action!
Black, Latinx, Antifa or Native protesters would have been tear-gassed, water-cannoned, beaten with batons or shot for such out of control behavior.
During the MAGA melee, their Dear Leader tweeted this:
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/we-will-never-concede-trump-baselessly-asserts-voter-fraud-speech-n1253011
Perhaps we should name this movie: Wilding At The Capitol
This is a natural result of decades of hate radio, faux news and ALEC (American Legislative Exchange Council) designed gun laws.
Reaping the whirlwind….
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Update: This led to a riot. A mob incited by President Trump to march on the Capitol building and show their “strength”, did so and stormed the Capitol! Four are reported dead so far, 50 arrested. The police, who are generally pro-Trump, did little to stop it and only regained control hours later.
An early YouGov opinion poll shows that 45% of Republicans in the country at large support the storming of the Capitol.
Congress has resumed the count of the Electoral College vote. Arizona’s vote was challenged. The challenge failed. In the Senate only 12% of Republicans voted to throw out Arizona’s vote, but in the House, 58% of Republicans did. And that was after the riot!
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“Update: This led to a riot. A mob incited by President Trump to march on the Capitol building and show their “strength”, did so and stormed the Capitol!”
My,my, what a difference a year and a change in venue makes! Last year everybody was standing with HK. Now the same thing is happening in Washington D.C. and it’s a riot? The Chinese are laughing their a.. off. These events always look better from afar. Will Trump be prosecuted for inciting a riot or will the Democrats pretend it didn’t happen?
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Update: A challenge against Pennsylvania also failed. All the Electoral College votes have now been counted and Joe Biden officially declared the winner. Trump has promised a peaceful transfer of power.
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I’m strangely OK with politicians feeling a bit unsafe at a time when many Americans are in very precarious financial and medical situations while their so-called representatives do little to address the real issues.
(Pelosi’s and Mitch’s homes also had slogans painted on them a few days ago)
American democracy has always had caveats and the historical gains (in suffrage) have been continually undermined by voter suppression. Democracy has also been insidiously hollowed out by corporate sell-out politicians. If voters know politicians are accountable to their donors and lobbyists rather than those who voted for them, how is that representative government?
It’s like a tree whose yellowed leaves were mistaken for its response to the seasonal change to colder weather when it was actually dying. After it fails to refoliate in the summer, a gust of wind breaks a large branch and reveals it was dead and rotted inside all along.
Trump is merely the gust of wind.
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@Afrofem
“Reaping the Whirlwind” indeed…
Another angle is that America has encouraged insurrections oversees on a regular basis. So the whirlwind is also bringing “the chickens home to roost”.
You can sense, too, that Biden believes he’s the man for the moment but his empty platitudes will be entirely insufficient right now. He’s neither inspirational enough nor – as expected of an establishment pick – radical enough. He wants to “heal the soul of the nation” with performative rituals while people are angry because they’re going to be homeless or bankrupt from their hospital stays during this pandemic.
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@grojo
This is the fundamental question.
Put in other words “can the USA now be called a banana republic or not”?
Donald Trump has successfully demonstrated again and again that despite all the talk about strong institutions or American exceptionalism, at the end of day this nation is at the mercy of a ruthless wannabe dictator bent on to submit it to his will, like many other.
We, who live in other corners of the world, knew already that.
Let’s see what comes next.
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So now that the chickens have come home to roost, at the eleventh hour, Republicans want to be disgusted with Trump after enabling and coddling him for four years. Always on brand with this bunch hypocrites until the end.
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Two Americas, one with the protection for the complexion. And the other death and imprisonments.
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Victory in Georgia 🍑💙🙌🏿
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White privilege and white nationalism and Republican stupidity were definitely shown at the siege on the Capital yesterday.
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The 25th amendment and a second impeachment need to happen.
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“An early YouGov opinion poll shows that 45% of Republicans in the country at large support the storming of the Capitol.”
So, slightly less than half of slightly less than half of the electorate. That tracks. Typically 1/3 of us believe all manor crazy nonsense at any one time, including aliens at Area 51 or Trump is a great president, or Dominion voting machines used AI to switch votes, or planes are spraying nanobots into the atmosphere… so, of the 1/3 that believe Trump won in a landslide, only some of them believe storming the Capitol was a good idea. I’d say that’s progress!
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@ Origin
Another angle is that America has encouraged insurrections oversees on a regular basis. So the whirlwind is also bringing “the chickens home to roost”.
So true. I learned a while ago that when governments and people in the Global South experience upheavals, the USA (government or corporate concerns) generally have a finger or two in those pies. They are either selling arms or providing material support to phony “rebels”.
From the 1994 genocide in Rwanda to the coup in Bolivia a couple of years ago, the US is there in the background, supporting regressive, rightwing forces. Then our stenographic media describes those upheavals as “ousting dictators” [in Latin America] or “tribal conflicts” [in Africa].
It is unsurprising to me that an angry and fearful rightwing in the USA would be the portion of the population to directly threaten federal and state politicians. They’ve been egged on with overheated anti-government rhetoric for the past four decades.
While the media and certain government agencies have been suppressing Black, Indigenous, selected Latinx communities and various sectors of the Left (anti-war, animal rights and anti-fascists), those same organizations have been facilitating violent paramilitaries on the Right.
Certainly we are seeing those chickens on parade in the barnyard right now.
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@ Mary Burrell
I think the election of those two Dem senators in Georgia may have been one of the things that ignited MAGA mob violence yesterday.
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China’s revenge for summer 2019: (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TozxICSZpKU)
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@Mary Burell
Better would be to let his presidency ends without further drama and then prosecute him as a normal civilian. Don´t forget that the man incited a mob that provoked the death of human beings. He must be held accountable for that. As a President that is probably not possible, but as a civilian yes.
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I’m still waiting for them to use this little riot to push censorship, among other things. The same things that some people are calling on to be used against Trump will be used later against BLM and other popular protests as America gets increasingly volatile under widening inequality.
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@ munubantu
The 25th Amendment can remove him immeditately before he does any more harm. Impeachment would prevent him from running for president again. That the Republicans are NOT removing him is a very bad sign. It means the US is heading into a future that will probably become increasingly fascist.
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Donald Trump said he was the Law and Order President. His supporters were breaking the law. So when it was Black Lives Matter supporters there was rubber bullets and pepper spray and brutality. Words have power, Trump’s words over the last four years have been violent and toxic. His supporters were like salivating Pavlov’s dogs to his dog whistles.
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I wouldn’t be surprised if an increasingly unequal country becomes authoritarian. You have to protect the wealth of the few somehow.
(The Patriot Act and the surveillance state came into effect under “respectable” politicians long before Trump gained any political power.)
And the American fauxgressives will not necessarily be a bulwark against this. Just as many “liberals” will call for censorship when free speech threatens their preferred status quo, they’ll prefer violent repression to popular movements that diminish their power.
We’ve already see the Democratic party move underhandedly to thwart popular support for primary candidates whose policies they dislike. They’ve done it to sheepdog Bernie multiple times. Many liberals are hawks and will support the destabilization of “3rd world” democracies in favor dictatorial regimes that do their bidding. Democracy, as an ideal, is expendable to them; their own power is not.
I have always had an issue with the overemphasis on Trump to the extent that his persona becomes a disstraction from the much more mainstream and encompassing movement towards corporatist totalitarianism. The Democrats and Republicans both lull different segments of the American population to sleep while they both pursue that movement.
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On another note, Purdue and Loeffler were swamp creatures and it’s nice seeing that wraith Mitch relegated to “minority leader” just for the schadenfreude.
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You gotta love it though.,..all the pro-cop people trying to lionize this woman (Ashli Babbitt) who was shot while breaking into the Capitol building. Meanwhile, black women (and men) – like Atatiana Jefferson and Breonna Taylor (or Botham Jean) – who were murdered by police while relaxing in their own homes were often put in the wrong.
Washington post on the shooting at the Capitol:
https://archive.is/DqadA
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OMG, Afrofem…
Wilding at the Capitol indeed…
pieeeeew…
https://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/ny-trump-capitol-riot-poopers-20210107-prlsqytyabgdhnexushotl4nam-story.html
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Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell aka Turtle Satan, has a nice ring to it.
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This past Summer Black Lives Matter protestors when peacefully protesting for social justice to be treated like human beings, were called thugs, and animals and all nature of vile things. But the MAGA terrorist looting, and vandalism, defecating, urinating in hallways and spreading body waste on walls. Yet they are seen as true American patriots.
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Trump has been permanently suspended from Twitter. So now that he has no way to vent, he is more enraged and is probably plotting more evil to unleash on the American people. He is going whole scorched earth. Not to mention he has access to the nuclear codes.
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@ Mary
Blocked from Twitter but not from the nuclear codes. Carry on.
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Perhaps he’ll start tweeting from the POTUS account, lol.
I think many Americans are desperate to see the back of Trump and to consider his era closed. However, almost 75M people voted for him. They’d be the 20th most populous country on Earth. That’s more than the population of France, and France is Europe’s 2nd most populous country (after Germany). It’s sobering to consider that he’ll have a captive audience on the platform that eventually hosts him.
It’ll be Fox News on steroids. I’m honestly not sure whether it’s better to allow him on mainstream platforms or force him into his own ecosystem where he’ll control the rules of the discourse. People can refute him on twitter and I remember the court ruled that he can’t block people as President. However, I’m sure Trump will be facing some legal challenges post-presidency so it remains to be seen how free he will be to continue his role as MAGA leader.
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The other question is whether we’re entering a period of increased tech censorship with Trump as justification just as 9/11 justified loss of civil liberties. After Trump’s election in 2016, we’ve heard screams in favor of censorship but once it’s out the box it can be wielded against anyone. The fact that Trump’s administration benefited from the expansion of executive powers under Bush and Obama demonstrates this.
I’m of the view that if Trump is saying things that cross the line of protected “free speech” and into criminal territory he should face the consequences on that basis. However, should he be prevented from speaking in the first place? Do we lose our email accounts for sending out emails the host/ISP doesn’t like?
AFAIK, these social media companies cannot be held legally liable for what its users say. So they really have the discretion to allow “dangerous” ideas of one kind while banning “dangerous” ideas of another kind. That kind of power in the hands of a few people is kind of unsettling.
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The same terrorist/ insurrectionist are the same one who think Kapernick’s kneeling was disrespecting the flag. Make it make sense.
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@Mary
It’s interesting how they’re totally unable to see both sides of the coin. They’ll talk about “free speech” when a publisher drops their book but want players to be sanctioned for kneeling. Freedom for me but not for thee.
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Twitter banned Trump forever lol
Jack Dorsey can do that because Twitter is basically his property.
These conservatives are just fine with bakers refusing to bake cakes for gay weddings or other such discrimination but have a cow about this interfering with “free speech”.
So while it is true that social media in the hands of a few can be biased and can shut down “ideas” they don’t like thats still different then the government controlling ideas or speech.
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It’s still sort of worrisome given the trend towards privatization. With so much of the internet landscape being owned by private companies free speech protections could become a museum exhibit just by failing to apply and not being updated to reflect the times. The Net Neutrality debate comes to mind as well.
Anyway, one thing that hasn’t been adequately addressed, IMO, is the ease with which access to the capitol building was obtained. Was it just incompetence or something more. I asked the those questions about 9/11 and I also ask them about the President’s Poop Putsch.
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Origin
“Anyway, one thing that hasn’t been adequately addressed, IMO, is the ease with which access to the capitol building was obtained.”
They had plenty of time to prepare for the demonstration. Which makes me think Trump deliberately had the Capital police understaffed because he wanted this event to happen.
So he gives his inflammatory speech, points to the Whitehouse and then leaves in his bullet proof limo so he can watch the choas from his wide screen TV in the safety of his bunker.
You don’t want me as president so I’ll make a mockery of everything.
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Abagond, why not a post about Blacks who are vocal and ardent followers of President Trump and MAGA? For example Ali Alexander.
In science and detective work they ask you to look more closely where you spot something apparently out of place. The deeper truth lays there. Blacks who love Trump are an excellent example of that.
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There is a large number of law enforcement officials who are white supremacist and white nationalists. I can’t help but think some of those police officers gave those MAGA insurrectionist access to the capital. And another misconception is that many of those insurrectionist are of the poor working class. Poor working class folks don’t have money to take off from work and charter buses and other means of transportation to over throw the government.
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I still must always be mindful that 70 million people wanted an authoritarian governments. Knowing that is horrifying. 70 plus million Americans are okay with a dictator and are anti- democracy.
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The passengers of Flight 93 died to protect that same building domestic terrorist stormed.
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Lastly, this is about “whiteness “ Black Americans had the audacity to show up in large numbers to vote. This angers so many of them. Because they don’t want an America were Black Americans are equal to them. They don’t want to share anything in the social hierarchy. Donald Trump enabled these monsters to be their white devil selves. He has been throwing the red meat to his supporters for four years. This is the cumulative result. Not only do I feel the capital police are complicit in the insurrection, there are many in the Republican Congress who are also complicit. They have been planning this for a long time.
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As I probably said before, it’s the era of consequences and I’m OK with it.
We all know about the injustices of the past but even putting those aside, the country’s institutions have been hollowed out more recently because of greed. That is behind the horrible pandemic response and the lack of anything in which most citizens trust that could possibly be a voice of unity and calm amid the current political controversies.
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The Houston Chronicle is calling for Ted Cruz to resign:
https://archive.is/rrtVT
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Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley are two seditious traitors to our democracy. They need to expelled from Congress along with the rest of the Republican Congressmen and women who had a part in this attempt to hijack the election. There needs to be serious consequences for all of them.
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The Trump Capitol Siege was like a deja vu rerun of the Napoleonic Wars within France ala The Count of Monte Cristo where those that aligned with Napoleon Bonaparte (Bonapartists) were considered traitors to the French Monarchy. Crazy how these circumstances mirror each other.
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Lastly, this is about “whiteness “ Black Americans had the audacity to show up in large numbers to vote. This angers so many of them. Because they don’t want an America were Black Americans are equal to them. They don’t want to share anything in the social hierarchy.
nailed it.
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Blue Lives Matter right?
https://twitter.com/JaredPushner/status/1348347673313734659
Racist hypocrites!
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I hope that the security related to the inauguration day of Biden/Harris is prepared and carried out properly. More mistakes, like the ones pictured above, must be avoided in the future if Americans want to live in peace as a society.
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I feel like shutting down “dangerous speech” through private social media companies acting on their own is kind of unstable. What happens when corporations wish to curry favor or the actors are suave and the corporations are OK with them? Should the limits of free speech merely be corporations’ prerogative implicitly?
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@Origin
While “free speech” can be tricky, I agree that shutting it down can be risky. I do believe that companies should be able to though because it’s their platform and we’re all free to start another one if we don’t like how we’re treated there. They have to do whatever they feel will enable them to retain as many customers as possible. “Customers” in the case of free-to-us social media platforms are the advertisers and many corporations began making waves about pulling campaign money away from Trump’s circle. The next logical step would be moving ad dollars to platforms that acted in a way those companies consider to be “responsible”. Obviously, I would feel differently if they were government run social medias.
That said, I’m disappointed in the demise of Parler. I didn’t have an account but, my understanding is that the platform embraced accountability to the extent that people needed verified real names and they even left all the location EXIF data in images and videos. Essentially, you were free to post whatever you wanted but, you were also VERY easy to locate IRL if someone wanted to “continue the discussion” with you in person. I don’t know if that was entirely intentional but, it had to be a treasure trove of valuable intel for the FBI and it was only a matter of time before the media caught on.
Conservative politicians and pundits tried to convince slighty-less-than-half of the country that social media was biased against them and suppressing their viewpoints. Then, once an alternative started to take root, it literally gets removed and suppressed which serves only to 100% verify their, originally unfounded, fears. The events of the last week will absolutely serve to herd otherwise reasonable people more toward the extreme right.
Combine that with the fact it was just clearly demonstrated how easily government could be overrun, weapons and bombs found on scene, etc… It is hard to imagine a better recruiting tool. Carrot and stick both… draw wannabe extremists with a show of force and then social media shuttles them right to you by restricting their online circles to environments you’re already operating within. I don’t envy the FBI right now.
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@Open Minded Observer
I can actually get totally onboard with restriction of the free speech of fascists. To this day, Germany has certain restrictions on expressions associated with the Nazis. However that is law in Germany.
So I’m wondering whether it is sustainable to leave freedom of speech up to the discretion of private corporations who decide what should be curtailed based on profit-driven market forces. If those decisions happen to land on a side that is considered favorable to society in one instance, they may not in another instance. Certainly, Trump had his twitter account until it was obvious he was no longer going to have any legitimate power within the political system.
Also, since all social media companies are privately owned and we currently can’t demand that they be unbiased publishers (with the exception of content determined to be illegal – which could include Nazi’s/fascism) then they essentially control the discourse or have the latent power to control it. Is that OK?
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@ munubantu
Ali Alexander is a good suggestion. I did do a post on Candace Owens:
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@Origin
“Is that OK?”
It’s certainly not any more or less ideal than revenue-driven news media. I think fundamentally we are the ones that lend our eyeballs to the sources which allow them to charge advertisers for those views. So, since our education system is publicly funded (to some extent and that’s a whole separate conversation). Our government could be tasked with teaching us better research and thinking skills… teaching us real history and also teaching us why the context is so important as well as what to look out for as it attempts to repeat. Essentially, investing in making us better and more discerning consumers. The catch is, we’d have to elect people that want that instead of people that prefer the benefits of an ignorant and easily manipulated electorate.
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@Open Minded Observer
There is a difference between revenue-driven traditional media and social media though: social media users do not just lend their eyeballs but their content. Social media is really a form of multidirectional communication, sharing aspects of telephone/telegram with newspaper or broadcast TV. Like a technological bulletin-board, virtually all of the platforms’ actual content is provided by users.
So I detect something vaguely techno-feudalist when users (serfs) – who make the platform into something of value – actually have no rights on them. Their content can be used or removed at will and their personal data can be sold.
As such platforms become even more pervasive in society, esp. in the context of the pandemic limiting face-to-face interactions, the relevance and influence of social media companies grows.
Yet they answer only to their own discretion. (Since social media is communication, imagine if your phone calls were monitored by private telephone companies and terminated if you said something against their published policies.) To me, this is the larger issue. I’m not arguing for neo-Nazis’ rights to expression – perhaps society should consider it appropriate to ban the public expression of their views- but I am questioning the unchecked discretion of social media companies.
They may be private companies but private companies can be regulated. Banks are regulated. The medical profession is regulated. IIRC, There is already a law saying that social media they cannot be held liable for what their users publish. So if that’s the case, do they really need complete freedom to squash voices as well?
[The coordinated social media censorship of the Hunter Biden story, which was actually reported on by a traditional newspaper, comes to mind.]
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@Origin
“imagine if your phone calls were monitored by private telephone companies and terminated if you said something against their published policies.”
Slight difference there, in that I pay them for that service so I am the customer as opposed to social media where I am the product. However, I take your point.
I heard a comment on a podcast over the weekend about people being opposed to corporate regulation of free speech but being in favor of government regulation of free speech. I think, in a capitalist country, both have to coexist and balance. Those things are being tested right now and our conversation is evidence of that. Whatever the path ahead looks like, I stand by my comment that educating those that consume paid (propaganda, clickbait, ads) and free (news and social) and even in-person conversation, would go a long way toward reducing the penetration of misinformation.
Maybe it is because I don’t participate in any of the platforms that banned Trump that I don’t see them as “utilities” quite the same way you might. To me, they are totally optional entertainment platforms for which there are myriad alternatives. As evidenced by the fact that we keep hearing conservatives express that they’re being silenced…. i.e. If they were truly being silenced, I wouldn’t have to here them complain about it ad nauseum. Even Abagond has banned posters and deleted posts. Some of those folks have their own blogs dedicated to whining about being banned. If WordPress banned his blog, as a paying customer, I would feel differently than if they banned mine (a free account).
Does that “capitalist” approach ultimately lead to a World where wealthier opinions gain traction? Maybe. But, that has historically been the case here hasn’t it? The internet gave voice to the previously voiceless and we all loved it at first until it started to lead to insurrection in our own country. When regular citizens are just too ignorant, we leave it up to our stable-genius government officials and CEOs to protect us from ourselves. I don’t love either of those options. So, balance is needed… and it must be messy…. kind of a 3-way tug-o-war between Gov, Corp and unrestricted free speech. I don’t know where those lines are because I think they’re always shifting and, again, an educated and discerning public can be vigilant about maintaining the balance. My guess is that a Venn diagram of my opinions and yours have more overlapping than not.
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“…an educated and discerning public can be vigilant about maintaining the balance.”
Perhaps that is why so-called conservatives take such pains to defund and degrade public education. They even attack education professionals.
Teachers were once one of the most respected professionals in the country. I’ve lost count of the times in the past two decades that I’ve read some anti-teacher rant in local newspapers and later, online. I’ve read that teachers are supposedly lazy moochers who lead children astray.
Higher education has been progressively defunded over the past 40 years also. Prior to 1985, tuition in many state universities was free or so low cost it could be funded with a summer job. In addition, many college and university professors have been pushed to financial precarity. Many work without contracts, benefits or the hope of tenure.
All of this effort to dumb down and discourage critical thinking by the American public has been a smashing success. We see, read and hear the effects every day.
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And just to give Americans especially those who opposed him, Trump will give us the middle finger by pardoning all the domestic terrorist that stormed the National Capitol.
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@Open Minded Observer
Slight difference there, in that I pay them for that service so I am the customer as opposed to social media where I am the product. However, I take your point.
I don’t think it is quite accurate to say, “you are the product” on social media. Rather the product that social media companies monetize is derived from users’ participation in the platform. It is a more neo-feudalistic proposition whereby users “work” the platform (“land”) and the owners extract most of the fruit of that labor. Of course, one can choose not to participate.
@Open Minded Observer
Maybe it is because I don’t participate in any of the platforms that banned Trump that I don’t see them as “utilities” quite the same way you might. To me, they are totally optional entertainment platforms for which there are myriad alternatives.
I don’t use them either, except for browsing twitter occasionally to the extent that it allows someone unregistered to access the platform. However, my personal non-participation doesn’t blind me to the ubiquity of the dominant platforms [it’s a bit of a stretch to say there are a “myriad” relevant ones]. Facebook has over 2 BILLION users. Senators, Presidents, Members of Congress, and departments of government, are all on twitter. Now that Trump’s twitter account has been suspended, where is the publicly accessible record of what he said on there as President?
Finally, your last paragraph seems to stop just short of being an argument against democracy because people are too dumb. [I’m sure the elites would be happy to accept calls for the expansion of their powers to determine what best for everyone…themselves first, of course.]
However, the “insurrection” didn’t happen just because people are dumb but because of successful propaganda. Propaganda like “Russia hacked our elections” when there is no evidence Russia changed a single cast vote or “Iraq has WMDs” to build support for an unjustified invasion. People believed those. Likewise, there was a propaganda campaign – by people in respectable positions and boosted by aligned media – pushing the idea that the recent AMERICAN elections were illegally stolen by the democrats. Consequently, people believed, just as they believe when a respectable American says some foreign leader, like Venezuela’s Maduro, is a dictator who rigged elections.
Elites: [Manipulate the people with disinformation]
Also Elites: “People are too dumb, we need more power to manipulate them”.
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Here’s a view from Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel:
https://apnews.com/article/merkel-trump-twitter-problematic-dc9732268493a8ac337e03159f0dc1c9
Why do we care though, when anyone can start a private platform and ban whomever they want from it? Because scale matters, and it has always mattered.
Police are unlikely to be interested if you’re hosting a small meeting at your home but if you’re holding a massively public demonstrations of thousands of people the police may get involved given the potential public impact (traffic etc.).
A mom and pop store probably won’t attract the interest of anti-trust investigators but a large monopoly with huge numbers of customers and business partners might.
So it’s not unusual for changes in scale to trigger greater social interest in the activities of private enterprises. From that perspective, it wouldn’t be inconsistent if a social media giant like Facebook (with BILLIONS of users and enormous reach) attracts regulatory interest while smaller platforms do not. There would be greater social impact due to Facebook’s potentially arbitrary exercise of power.
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@Origin
I guess I disagree with your “neo-feudalistic proposition” only because the fruit that the owners are profiting from is more people. The content isn’t the product. We “work” to recruit and maintain the interest of other people and it is those people that are being monetized. Tom-ay-to / tom-ah-to I suppose because in either case, we are not the customer. Paying the bills, keeping the lights on and creating the jobs is all funded by the customers buying our views and clicks… so, I suppose our actions are the fruit if you see it that way. Splitting hairs though.
““People are too dumb, we need more power to manipulate them”.”
I recognize that you weren’t attributing that to me but, your responses almost read you interpret my opinion to be just short of that. I tried to express a desire for balance in a 3-legged stool. Corp able to pursue profits while being regulated by govt. and the user base. People free to speak their mind while being regulated by govt and corp profits. Govt regulating everybody while being elected by us and funded by them. Perhaps overly simplistic.
Yes, I completely agree that scale matters. Parler went from zero to a few million users in a matter of months before it was squashed in this instance. TikTok went from nothing to a silly thing to a huge user base in a short time. I may be wrong, but I believe Facebook is shrinking in usage in the US as other platforms replace it… new ones every year it seems like. Maybe it’s because I’m a geek, but I used “myriad” to describe alternatives because as long as the internet itself exists, new platforms can popup overnight and the crowd will follow. Rapidly, as evidenced by Trump supporters, older folks, using communications platforms today that they’d never even heard of 2 weeks ago.
Anyway, to be clear, I am not advocating for a purely capitalist or purely government regulated or purely free-for-all approach. I’m advocating for balance, oversight and educating the public so that we are less susceptible to lies in the first place. I assume you knew WMDs and Iraq2 were BS right? Me too. I told people in my circles that little Bush was just trying to finish what daddy couldn’t and was letting the party push through it’s agenda. I know you know Trump was full of crap even before he announced he was running. I’m not some stable genius with a magical ability to know things… just an average guy who like to trust, but verify. If a larger majority of Americans did that, Trump never would have made it past the primaries in the firstplace and our entire conversation would be moot because “big tech” wouldn’t have been faced with a decision to restrict the facilitation of an insurrection. Was their action overreaching? Quite likely. Are we lucky they did it? Quite likely but, we’ll never know.
I think if you want a truly public internet forum for the exchange of ideas, then that’s what we should build. Who knows, maybe that’s what will come out of this… a desire by the people for such a publicly funded platform.
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Relevant to this conversation about tech giants de-platfoming Trump is the fact that he is only the highest profile individual kicked off Facebook and Twitter, etc.
Many Black activists have been locked out of their Facebook and Twitter accounts for years now after merely complaining about abuse from anti-Black individuals. Facebook in particular has justified the ejection of Black activists by stating how they broke community rules by re-posting the abusive posts. Of course, the original abuser received no sanctions at all.
Then there was the case of Alex Jones of InfoWars. He and a slew of figures across the political spectrum have also been de-platformed by the tech giants. The precedent has been set.
However…
The consequences of the tech giants selective outrage and “too little, too late” responses to the speech of certain users may include an exodus to alternative social networks. I hope movement outside of the realm of the giants will help break their monopoly power. In the end, that would be a good thing.
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@Open Minded Observer
I guess I disagree with your “neo-feudalistic proposition” only because the fruit that the owners are profiting from is more people. The content isn’t the product. We “work” to recruit and maintain the interest of other people and it is those people that are being monetized. Tom-ay-to / tom-ah-to I suppose because in either case, we are not the customer. Paying the bills, keeping the lights on and creating the jobs is all funded by the customers buying our views and clicks… so, I suppose our actions are the fruit if you see it that way. Splitting hairs though.
It may seem like I’m splitting hairs but I do not think that they monetize “people”, they monetize active USERS. The value that social media companies extract is at the nexus of a person and their platform. Only people “working the land” on the platform [aka “engaged” users] are creating value and the fruit of their participation is then monetized, typically through advertisers. USING the platform [creating content, liking content etc.] is an active mode, like working, and it’s that activity that generates value. Yet in many cases only the platform owner benefits monetarily from the enrichment of the platform by user content and individual users are expendable. That’s where my analogy to feudalism came from.
I assume you knew WMDs and Iraq2 were BS right? Me too. I told people in my circles that little Bush was just trying to finish what daddy couldn’t and was letting the party push through it’s agenda.
Whether one is likely to fall for propaganda has a lot to do with whether one already distrusts those making the claims. There are probably folks who immediately sniffed out Bush’s agenda in Iraq that would have fallen for HRC’s justifications for overthrowing Qaddafi in Libya simply because they respected Hillary. (This is why corporations pay celebrities to sell products.) Often the facts are disputed and we have to decide what to believe with limited firsthand information. The people’s whose testimony we trust could then lead us astray. For example, some people may have been moved by Colin Powell appearing before the UN to support Bush’s claims about Iraq’s WMD. So I don’t want to attribute susceptibility to propaganda solely to lack of education.
Anyway to your final paragraph, yes, the internet is a lot less public than people think it is. Amazon, in addition to running the CIA’s servers also hosts Facebook, Netflix, Apple, Pinterest, Slack, and – before this month – Parler. There is a significant amount of consolidation and power in tech. The fact that we may be glad to see them unilaterally shut down Trumpists does not mean they can’t bare their fangs at something dear to us too.
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@Origin
I’m way behind on my podcast listening but, I just heard this over the weekend and it reminded me of our conversation. They brought up many points you and I were discussing. No “conclusions” but, interesting discussion: https://www.npr.org/2021/01/13/956471675/big-tech-speech-and-the-president-of-the-united-states
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