Dear Media: Media Crit Like It’s Football, FFS

/39 Comments/in , , /by

[NB: check the byline, thanks. /~Rayne]

I’ve been fuming about this since — oh, check the date and time on this graphic:

For the NFL football or Michigan uninformed, the Detroit Lions played the Buffalo Bills on Sunday evening at home. The hometown crowd was amped up because the Lions had a 12-1 season and already garnered a playoff slot.

But they also knew things would be tense because of the number of injured players on the team.

The Bills opened up a 14-point lead in the first quarter and the Lions were never able to catch them; the final score was 48-42.

That’s the frame from which the above report in Gannett’s local affiliate the Detroit Free Press (Freep) reported on CBS Sports’ coverage of the game.

Gannett is the largest newspaper publisher in the US; it’s the owner and publisher of USA Today and 32 other news papers. Freep’s criticism of CBS Sports coverage follows decades of CBS missteps in the Detroit market.

During what little I watched of the game, CBS’s talking heads were shit. Very little commentary on a couple lousy calls, or not-calls, in at least one case of pass interference early in the game.

I won’t bother to post his crap here but commentator Tony Romo was a dick, not exactly endearing CBS to the Detroit Metro audience. You’d think he’d know by now there’s quarterback smack talk and then there’s former player professional broadcaster sports talk, the latter for which he is paid.

All that aside, this article does more to criticize another media outlet’s coverage than we have seen among national outlets who have systematically fucked up coverage for decades.

How and why can a large newspaper owned by a national organization freely criticize a national broadcast and streaming media organization about its coverage, but the same kinds of organizations have failed our democracy by bootlicking for fascists?

By bootlicking I offer as an example ABC News which folded like a broken lawn chair settling $15 million on Trump who’d claimed he was defamed by ABC. ABC had used the same language leveled at Trump in court but somehow a national news broadcaster is no longer permitted to exercise free speech reporting facts in Trumplandia.

After the gross moral and ethical failure of the Washington Post to make an endorsement in the presidential race, after Los Angeles Times’ similar failing, one can only wonder what’s left of the country’s once-free press.

Don’t get me started on the bullshit coverage which parroted right-wing talking points over the last three presidential elections, from “But her emails” to “Joe’s old” to “Hunter Biden Hunter Biden Hunter Biden.”

NYU’s Jay Rosen has encouraged news media to depart from its toxic horse race coverage of elections and move toward reporting the stakes of the race. Stakes coverage should be a minimum across all coverage of politics and governance.

If media can’t do that — and they’ve demonstrated they can’t — if they insist on treating our democratic governance like sports, the least they can do is criticize their own industry’s performance like they do when it comes to football.

 

This is an open thread.

The Problem Bezos Can’t See

/88 Comments/in /by

 

The whimpering op-ed by WaPo owner Jeff Bezos, which Marcy shredded here, starts with a true statement: trust in the media is lower than trust in Congress and has been falling steadily since 1972, according to this from Gallup. Here’s the question Gallup asks:

In general, how much trust and confidence do you have in the mass media — such as newspapers, TV and radio — when it comes to reporting the news fully, accurately and fairly — a great deal, a fair amount, not very much or none at all?

How would any thinking person answer that question? Do I average across all the media I consume or all the media I hear about? Do I average across all the reporters I read or all reporters? Do I allow for size of audience? Does it matter if I’m talking science or SCOTUS rulings or political campaigns? Are we talking about the language of the reporters, the headlines, the way they handle anonymity or something else? I know some of them are deliberately lying. How do I factor that in? I don’t know what this question is measuring, but I’m pretty sure it isn’t very useful for the purposes Bezos uses it.

The interesting fact shows up in the tabs. The huge change comes from Republicans, where the total of “great deal” and “fair amount” went from 68 in 1972 to 12 in 2024; and Independents, from 60 to 27. The drop in Democrats is far less, from 74 to 54, and most of that is in the last two years.

I’d guess that no one distrusts the media they follow. If the question to Republicans was “do you trust Fox News”, the answer would be either “a great deal” or “a fair amount”.

I don’t “trust” the media. I have more confidence in some than others, and I start with an inclination to trust reporting in those. Trust comes from checking the sources cited, documents linked, and the input of other people whose opinions I’ve come to value. Like Marcy.

The actual problem

Ever since early 2016, Democrats in the general population have been complaining about the tilt of major media against Democrats and in favor of Trump and his cronies. Even before that, activists were pointing out that the Sunday shows feature Republicans, and rarely Democrats. It was a running joke that eiher John McCain or Lindsay Graham or both were on every Sunday. The complaints became angry as the media swarmed over the ridiculous Her Emails and Coney Says pieces, because most of us think that coverage made the difference in Hillary Clinton’s loss.

The complaints grew louder after Trump took office and reached a crescendo after the 2020 election when the idiot media failed to recognize that Trump was planning a coup. Tben the media told us that the second impeachment would never succeed, even before it was initiated, and treated it as a game. The facts didn’t matter, and they didn’t care.

Then Biden took office, and instead of attacking Trump as a proven danger, the media treated him as a candidate in waiting. They failed to report the utter failure of Trump’s policies. Tax cuts for the rich raised the national debt without creating any value for the nation. Appointing a SCOTUS so corrupt it would throw out any precedent Republicans don’t like had horrendous consequences for millions an no gain to anyone. Roe ve Wade is replaced by a reign of terror in Red States? Not news. Student loan forgiveness thrown out on spurious grounds? Perfectly normal, and forgotten immediately.

They treated the effective team of Biden and the Democrats as equivalent to the obstructionist Trump and his lickspittle Republicans. They refused to report the successes of the Biden Administration on the economy and on the lives of us normal people. Instead they spewed a steady stream of lies and distractions pumped out by Trump and his billionaire backers.

The media assaulted Biden over his age, but refused to apply the same standard to Trump’s degenerating brain. Instead we got constant sane-washing of Trump’s weird rants. We only knew about them because of assiduous clipping and posting to social media and the amplification given by those not-journalists Bezos derides.

The spiked endorsement was just too much. People exploded.

And Bezos thinks this problem is affected by endorsements? His newspaper treats fantastical Republican talking points as equivalent to reality for years, and he condescends to explain that he has principles so we should suck it up and give him more money? He can’t figure out why his most likely readers and those with the highest trust in media, are furious?

Admit it Jeff: you’re afraid of Trump, and you kissed his ring.

WaPo’s Manufactured “Landslide”

/151 Comments/in , /by

[NB: check the byline, thanks. /~Rayne]

When a distinguished professor of journalism calls out the Washington Post on its bullshit, you’d hope WaPo would take note and make a correction in its direction:

One Democratic senator who is noted for being to the right end of the Democrats’ political spectrum apparently constitutes a landslide in Democratic Party opinion.

If Democrats stood on Sen. Michael Bennet’s side of the boat we’d be Republican Lite sinking the boat.

What’s truly disgusting about WaPo’s skewed priorities is that another event of far more import than Bennet’s lone opinion took place last evening and hasn’t received the scrutiny it should have.

Laffy wrote a thread summarizing Donald Trump’s campaign rally. I’m not going to post the entire thread, just posts 2 and 3 from a 10-post thread:

The entire thread begins at this link.

This synopsis spares you Trump’s droning whine as he reels out over an hour of white Christian nationalist/supremacist grievance using an absurd number of lies.

I listened to this nauseating dreck this morning and it’s awful. If this man is elected and allowed to act on his hatred relying on the Roberts’ court’s presidential immunity, no one who is a person of color or LGBTQ+ will be safe let alone other marginalized groups.

The rotting cherry on the top of this ugliness: this was a campaign rally held at Trump National Doral Golf Club in Miami.

In other words, Trump laundered campaign funds which paid for this event, transferring it to his Trump org-owned golf course and eventually into his own pocket.

The Secret Service was surely charged by the course for what resources it used to protect him at the course — this money went directly to the course and into Trump’s pocket.

GOP presumptive presidential nominee Trump was grifting right under the noses of his supporters and what little media was present, while airing so much hateful screed as a campaign speech.

But a “landslide” of one Democratic senator was more important and featured on WaPo’s front page.

Memory Lane: Did You Forget about the Golf?

/85 Comments/in , /by

[NB: check the byline, thanks. /~Rayne]

It’s a summer Saturday which has always been a golf day in Chez Rayne. Not that I’ve always played golf on this day of the week but I can count on my spouse hitting the links every Saturday from spring to fall.

Likewise you can bet your ass the orange-tinted former bawbag is playing golf.

Just as you could count on him playing golf while he was president, for more than 22% of his days he served in office.

What, you forgot that lard ass mooched off taxpayers this badly? Apparently the media has zero interest in reminding you.

Now imagine what an imperial president who can’t be restrained would do with their time if they could simply call their Florida home the Southern White House and their 18-holes of cheating an official act.

But Joe Biden is old.

Sadly, the Trump Golf Count website has been shuttered; it’s only available now in the Internet Archive. Would an imperial presidency permit a new golf count website if Trump is the imperial president?

Would we be able to learn just how badly Trump fucks taxpayers while cheating on his golf courses?

Will Trump screw with foreign and domestic policy by continuing Trump org’s relationship with LIV Golf, dispatching critics by bone saw as an official act?

Will the media accidentally video Trump saying, “Grab ’em by the wallet. They’ll let you do that if you’re king.”

This is an open thread.

NYT 2016: “But Her Emails” NYT 2024: “But His Debate”

/99 Comments/in , , /by

[NB: check the byline, thanks. /~Rayne]

Remember back in 2016 when Hillary Clinton’s emails were all The New York Times could write about? Flooding its front page instilled FUD – fear, uncertainty, and doubt, a well-known and frequently used tactic to undermine opposition.

(source: Vox, Study: Hillary Clinton’s emails got as much front-page coverage in 6 days as policy did in 69)

That. We’re watching a reprise of a FUD flood right now, this time with NYT’s uppermost management in on the effort.

In 2016 it was so bad it became a joke memorialized as a meme.

That was then, this is now. Welcome to NYT’s 2024 election FUD operation: “But His Debate.”

~ ~ ~

LOLGOP pointed out how bad the NYT’s front page was in a Mastodon post:

It’s far worse than LOLGOP shared, because the editorials also hammer on Biden’s debate performance:

Recall how the media bleated on for months about Clinton’s emails and how later after investigation her emails were a nothing burger. All that NYT energy trying to make fetch happen; but fetch wasn’t Clinton being prosecuted but losing her race to Trump

You can expect the same thing from here on forward, the entire NYT once again focused on making fetch happen.

Meanwhile, the one man crime spree goes on. Former Assistant AG for New York State and MSNBC commentator Tristan Snell nailed it:

This is what the NYT’s front page looked like the day after a Manhattan jury found Trump guilty on felony charges:

Two stories. That’s it. Nothing the day before about the trial.

NYT’s Editorial Board published an op-ed – Donald Trump, Felon – in which the NYT made no call for Trump to step down as the GOP candidate.

This is the last graf from that op-ed which summarizes the trial and the editorial board’s opinion:

In the end, the jury heard the evidence, deliberated for more than nine hours and came to a decision, which is how the system is designed to work. In the same way, elections allow voters to consider the choices before them with full information, then freely cast their ballots. Mr. Trump tried to sabotage elections and the criminal justice system — both of which are fundamental to American democracy — when he thought they might not produce the outcome he wanted. So far, they have proved resilient enough to withstand his attacks. The jurors have delivered their verdict, as the voters will in November. If the Republic is to survive, all of us — including Mr. Trump — should abide by both, regardless of the outcome.

That’s it. It’s on us, the voters. Don’t expect the NYT to sully itself with informing voters about candidate’s policy positions, they’ll be too busy trying to tank Biden’s candidacy for re-election.

~ ~ ~

It’s nearly impossible at this point to come to any conclusion except that the NYT has been and remains in the tank for Trump based on its history of coverage of Trump and his opponents Hillary Clinton in 2016 and Biden in 2024.

This POS from October 2016 is still incredibly offensive:

We already lost a far better POTUS in 2016 with NYT’s help, resulting in the loss of many American lives thanks to Trump’s corruption and incompetence.

Now we may lose a candidate for re-election who’s managed to fix many of the fuck-ups Trump generated, who’s ensured the U.S. economy has thrived in spite of pandemic pressures.

It’d be laughable if the stakes weren’t so high.

Trump’s engaged in criminal behavior which included not only trying to overthrow an election but the willful unlawful retention of classified materials including national defense information?

NYT: *yawn*

Trump says he wants to be a dictator on Day One, ordering a concentration camp for undocumented immigrants?

NYT: *bigger yawn*

Biden, suffering from a cold, has a poor showing at the first debate?

NYT: Oh we can’t have that! Biden must step aside!

I really thought it was the Washington Post which was racing to the basement with its hiring of Will Lewis and abortive hiring of Robert Winnett.

Nope. WaPo has nothing on the NYT.

Washington Post’s Sunday Night Editorial Massacre

/50 Comments/in , , /by

[NB: check the byline, thanks. /~Rayne]

This morning’s Washington Post newsletter – The 7 – offered a peek into the outlet’s ideological bent.

The seven topics offered to subscribers before 7:00 a.m. to help them catch up, in order presented:

1 — Mexico elected its first female president yesterday.

2 — Hunter Biden’s trial on criminal gun charges begins in Delaware today.

3 — President Biden announced a new cease-fire plan for Gaza.

4 — Anthony Fauci is set to testify in Congress today.

5 — Billions in U.S. taxpayer dollars are being used for tuition at religious schools.

6 — Simone Biles won her ninth national all-around title.

7 — A Chinese spacecraft landed on the “dark” side of the moon yesterday.

That’s right: the U.S.’s fourth largest newspaper by number of subscribers feels that Hunter Biden’s trial is more important than the Biden administration’s efforts to stop the genocide in Gaza.

Never mind the protests across the country over the last six months which have spurred numerous horserace polling articles as well as coverage of conflicts on U.S. campuses.

The trial isn’t even being held in D.C. which the Washington Post calls home.

At the very bottom of the newsletter is this news blurb:

Before you go … some news from The Post: Sally Buzbee, our executive editor since 2021, has stepped down.

How benign that sounds. Happy trails, Ms. Buzbee, good luck on your future endeavors.

Except this is what happened, reported last night:

Steve Herman @[email protected]

Washington Post – Matt Murray, former Editor in Chief of The Wall Street Journal, will replace Sally Buzbee as Executive Editor until the 2024 U.S presidential election, after which Robert Winnett, Deputy Editor of The Telegraph Media Group, will take on the new role of Editor.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/pr/2024/06/02/sally-buzbee-steps-down-executive-editor-washington-post-matt-murray-rob-winnett-take-editorial-leadership-roles-new-newsroom-structure/

Jun 02, 2024, 10:58 PM

Did Buzbee leave willingly? WaPo’s certainly not telling us. It’s as if Buzbee accidentally fell out a window leaving a vacancy.

Here’s the first two paragraphs from the WaPo’s own report on the shakeup:

The Washington Post today announced Sally Buzbee has stepped down as Executive Editor. Buzbee has been with The Washington Post since 2021, leading the newsroom through the turbulence of the pandemic and expanding its service journalism, including Climate and Well+Being. Under her leadership, The Washington Post has won significant awards, including the recent Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting.

Matt Murray, former Editor in Chief of The Wall Street Journal (WSJ), will replace Buzbee as Executive Editor until the 2024 U.S presidential election, after which Robert Winnett, Deputy Editor of The Telegraph Media Group, will take on the new role of Editor at The Washington Post, responsible for overseeing our core coverage areas, including politics, investigations, business, technology, sports and features.

Why would WaPo allow an Executive Editor who oversaw award-winning work to “step down”? Why would they promptly replace that EE with a temporary placeholder, and one who operated in a very different news organization?

It seems incredibly convenient that former Murdoch-News Corp editor Matt Murray will run WaPo just until the election.

Then WaPo will be helmed by an editor from a British conservative right-wing news organization, because we don’t have enough of our own Tories in media here. We need to rescue from Brexit import a Tory from a flailing media outlet overseas.

Not to mention Robert Winnett leaves a British paper with a subscriber base one-third the size of WaPo and with far less domestic and international impact.

When WaPo announced their slogan in 2017 – Democracy Dies in Darkness – one month after Trump was inaugurated, most observers scratched their heads. Would WaPo truly shine a light on that which is intent on killing our democracy? Would the paper be up to what has proven to be a monumental task?

But in hindsight we didn’t see that slogan for what it was. WaPo warned us it was going to turn off the lights. This abrupt change in editorial executives moving the paper further to the right is an indicator of yet more dimming of a truly free press.

Three Things: Let the Tedious Bashing Commence!

/215 Comments/in , /by

[NB: check the byline, thanks. /~Rayne]

Don’t you despise tedious media bashing which is often off base? Ha. I’m still laughing about this.

Quick, name five critics of U.S. media.

If you can’t rattle off at least five without a lot of thought, there isn’t enough media criticism.

We haven’t even touched the depths of tedious media bashing in this country let alone at this site.

~ 3 ~

Headline and subhead from The New York Times on May 9, 2024:

At a Dinner, Trump Assailed Climate Rules and Asked $1 Billion From Big Oil
At a private meeting at Mar-a-Lago, the former president said fossil fuel companies should donate to help him beat President Biden.

Headline and subhead from Washington Post on May 9, 2024:

What Trump promised oil CEOs as he asked them to steer $1 billion to his campaign
Donald Trump has pledged to scrap President Biden’s policies on electric vehicles and wind energy, as well as other initiatives opposed by the fossil fuel industry.

Guess who’s on the bylines for these two pieces. If you read Marcy’s work here frequently you’ll be able to take a good stab at it because of the consistency with which these journalists produce such dreck.

Neither of these articles use the word “bribe” or the phrase “quid pro quo,” and yet that’s exactly what Trump engaged in with fossil fuel companies.

The word “Ukraine” also doesn’t appear though Trump’s first impeachment was kicked off by a whistleblower disclosing a quid pro quo – no association made at all in the articles above with how transactional Trump has been, is, and may be should he win the 2024 election. Readers are supposed to know already just how corrupt Trump’s offer to fossil fuel companies is; they’re not to be so bluntly informed by the two major newspapers in the U.S.

Journalism by shovel. Not just burying the inconvenient, but shoveling bullshit like that POS NYT headline. “At a Dinner…” Really? That’s so critical to the public’s understanding of this candidate’s corrupt election behavior that we need to know this was just a harmless dinner?

If readers are surfing headlines to sift for important news to read, prefacing bribery with “At a Dinner” is one way to ensure readers speed on by.

So is ignoring the bribery.

Go to Google News and search for “trump oil companies” and compare and contrast headlines and articles since May 9. Amazing the consistency with which the Democrats are assailed for questioning a quid pro quo offered during a campaign event.

It’s ridiculous that it took 16 days to learn that the fossil fuel industry would receive a $109 billion return on investment if they paid Trump the $1 billion donation bribe he asked for.

And yes, the Guardian’s piece used the words “quid pro quo” though they quoted Sen. Jamie Raskin in doing so.

~ 2 ~

Jeff Jarvis, journalism prof at CUNY’s Newmark School, is succinct about this particular problem:

Jeff Jarvis @[email protected]

I challenge you to find this good news on the home page of The New York Times. Go to Business and you’ll have to dig to find it. “News judgment” is bias….
S&P 500, Nasdaq and Dow all hit record highs after encouraging inflation data

https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/15/economy/consumer-price-index-inflation-april

May 16, 2024, 07:42

I’ll let the NYT’s front page speak for itself:

You can see today’s front page at https://cdn.freedomforum.org/dfp/jpg16/lg/NY_NYT.jpg

Coverage of the internal friction about the appearance of ideological bent between parent NBC and cable subsidiary MSNBC makes the front page. So does a sextortion piece (which could have been run any time in the last year), and a puff piece about everything becoming a “journey” for celebrities.

The NYT’s online front page is fresher but no better. At 10:25 a.m. as I wrote this, the word “inflation” didn’t appear at all.

Plenty about Biden’s loss of donors and Trump leading Biden in polling.

Can’t imagine why coverage of ideological bent in reporting is above the fold at this newspaper.

~ 1 ~

CNN announced the moderators for the June 27 presidential debate. Jake Tapper and Dana Bash, hosts of CNN’s Sunday talk show State of the Union are queued up.

Doesn’t sound like CNN handled this well in past, blaming the institution for confusion about the venue.

You’ll find all the posts at this site tagged with “Jake Tapper” at this link:

https://www.emptywheel.net/?s=jake+tapper

And all the posts at this site tagged with “Dana Bash” here:

https://www.emptywheel.net/?s=dana+bash

Pardon me if I am incredibly skeptical about the ability of these two to catch a lie on the fly – especially at a news media outlet under pressure from management to be more Fox News-ish.

~ 0 ~

This is an open thread. Bring discussion here which would be off topic in other threads.

Three Things: No News Isn’t Good News

/192 Comments/in , , /by

[NB: check the byline, thanks. /~Rayne]

This last several weeks have made the media look really bad. You’d think after several key stories broke there’d be more and deeper coverage but nope.

U.S. media, Congress, and the citizens who elected them each own some of the media fail. Why aren’t we demanding more protection of our personal data in order to protect our democracy?

~ 3 ~

The New York Times published a story on March 28 about the acquisition of the former LIFE magazine assets and the defunct magazine’s resuscitation.

Life Magazine Will Come Back to, Well, Life
The investor Josh Kushner and his wife, Karlie Kloss, have struck a deal with Barry Diller’s media company to revive it as a regular print title.
By Andrew Ross Sorkin, Ravi Mattu, Bernhard Warner, Sarah Kessler, Michael J. de la Merced, Lauren Hirsch and Ephrat Livni

Nowhere in this puff piece a mere 404-words long written by at least one of seven contributors on this byline mention that Josh Kushner is Jared Kushner’s brother.

Nowhere in this heavily-laden beat sweetener is it mentioned that Josh and Jared share ownership of a problematic real estate management company, and that both met with Saudi and Qatari officials during the Trump administration.

Nowhere in this fluff is financing mentioned. Apparently it never occurred to one or more of seven journalists to ask if brother Jared contributed financing or guidance in any way.

We, the readers, are apparently supposed be very happy an attractive model and her now-billionaire spouse are reviving an old American media institution. We’re supposed to assume Kushner and Kloss are wholly financing this project out of their own pockets through their Bedford Media holding out of an appreciation for LIFE.

Why ever would we want to know more? As if we’d expect news from NYT.

~ 2 ~

It’s as if the Ronna McDaniel scandal never happened. There’s been no reported news about her since NBC canned her after MSNBC personalities protested her hiring on air.

I’ve been watching for any news about separation from Creative Artists Agency, who dropped her the same time she was terminated at MSNBC. CAA didn’t keep her on, as if they felt there was no hope of future contracts for her at all, even with right-wing news media.

Nada, not a word has emerged about CAA’s rejection. Just a spattering of op-eds in favor or against McDaniel’s separation from NBC.

One thing which has gone utterly unnoticed by journalists covering U.S. politics and media: a French conglomerate acquired majority interest in CAA last September, with two other foreign firms retaining substantive interest in the firm.

The Pinault Group closed on the deal while Singapore-based Temasek and Shanghai-based CMC Capital retain minority interests.

There are plenty of reasons for McDaniel to have lost her gig on NBC as well as her representation by CAA, like being an unindicted co-conspirator in Trump’s effort to defraud the U.S. and deny U.S. voters their civil rights.

But it doesn’t hurt to ask if foreign interests played a role in her representation or loss thereof. Perhaps a French-owned company doesn’t care to keep a talent who supported a NATO-undermining former president’s attempt to overthrow the U.S. government.

~ 1 ~

For decades there have been restrictions on foreign ownership of broadcast media. It’s about time we began to ask why we don’t have similar restrictions on social media, when social media has become a primary source for news in the U.S. for nearly half of Americans.

Twitter’s acquisition by Elon Musk, funded substantially by foreign interests, is one example. Since its sale, the former Twitter has become one of if not the largest source of misinformation and disinformation in U.S. media consumption. It’s difficult not to assume this is the reason Musk’s financial backers ponied up the money for an otherwise money-losing business.

Grindr, a social media platform for gay and bisexual men, and transgender people, was launched in the US in 2009. A majority interest was sold to a Chinese gaming company, Kunlun Tech Co. Ltd. in January 2016. Kunlun sought a buyer for Grindr after Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) notified Kunlun in March 2019 its foreign ownership of Grindr posed a national security threat.

Now many are watching stock price vacillations for Donald Trump’s Truth Social social media platform, owned by Trump Media & Technology Group Corp. (TMTG), the entity which succeeded the former special-acquisition corporation Digital World Acquisition Corp. (DWAC). DWAC had been associated with Chinese-owned ARC Capital and China Yunhong Holdings, both of which had some role in financing DWAC.

TMTG has been under investigation by the Department of Justice since 2022 for possible money laundering after TMTG had received a loan from Paxum Bank, partially owned by Russian Anton Postolnikov. It’s not clear why TMTG was able to list on a U.S. stock market exchange given the possibility this loan may have violated sanctions against Russian interests.

TikTok is owned by a Chinese firm and its users’ data is stored in China. It’s not the content but the location and control of U.S. users’ data which is and has been most problematic, though it’s easy for TikTok’s Chinese parent to manipulate what U.S. users will see including misinformation and disinformation. Trump’s former Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin has been trying to pull together a consortium to buy TikTok, but TikTok may have no interest in selling out, and it’s not clear if Mnuchin will end up seeking more foreign investors as Elon Musk did.

If Mnuchin – who met with Middle Eastern leaders during his stint as Treasury Secretary and departed with $1 billion in Saudi cash for his Liberty Strategic Capital fund — manages to pull off buying TikTok, what will he do with users’ data since the future business model is unclear at this time. Will he sell it to offshore buyers including hostile nation-states since there are few restrictions now preventing such sales? TikTok would be as much of threat under such a business model as it is now.

We need federal legislation to regulate not only users’ data privacy – all social media created by U.S. users should be kept inside the U.S. – but to limit control of social media firms by foreign owners, especially hostile nation-states.

Why was Grindr, of all the social media platforms which have been sold in whole or part to overseas parties, the one which drew attention from CFIUS? Especially after Twitter had been infiltrated by multiple Saudi spies, one of which were prosecuted before Musk made an offer to buy the platform? What foreign spies now have access to U.S. citizens and users’ personal data after Musk shit canned so many of Twitter’s pre-acquisition personnel?

This isn’t a First Amendment issue. It’s regulation of commerce, and commerce conducted inside the U.S. relying on U.S. citizens and residents as consumers and data sources shouldn’t pose a threat to national security.

~ 0 ~

This is an open thread. In addition to media criticism, bring your stray cat and dog topics here.

Hanging by Meta’s Threads

/67 Comments/in , , /by

[NB: check the byline, thanks. /~Rayne]

If you are very much online in social media, you’ve likely heard the buzz about Threads – the new microblogging platform owned and operated by Facebook’s parent, Meta.

I’m not going to get into a detailed discussion of Threads versus its problematic competitor Twitter or ex-Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey’s problematic alternative, Bluesky Social. You’re perfectly capable of doing the homework on them and other competing microblogging platforms.

Of concern to me: how will Threads eventually interact with the open source federated universe (fediverse) of platforms including Mastodon. Threads is expected to federate eventually and allow easy sharing of communications and content between member platforms in the fediverse.

There has been so much conversation about this topic in Mastodon that I’ve had to filter it out. The discussion has been warranted, but the subject has been polarizing and frankly exhausting.

Some Mastodon users – mostly those who left Twitter and miss it badly – want this new Meta project to integrate seamlessly with Mastodon so that they can encourage former Facebook folks to come over to Mastodon. They’re missing much busier levels of activity in their timelines which was driven by algorithms at Twitter and as well at Facebook. And some simply can’t handle the increased complexity Mastodon poses, from choosing an instance to finding friends old and new, or building a feed.

Some Mastodon users – like me – don’t really care to federate with Meta’s users whether from Facebook or Instagram. In my case my primary concerns are data privacy and remaining ad free. While I feel fairly confident my experience within Mastodon won’t ever involve ads, I can’t say that will be the case once I make contact with someone in Threads just as looking at a tweet on Twitter will likely expose me to advertising. I simply do not want to give my attention without my advance consent to any business advertising in social media.

(Side note: look around here in emptywheel – see any ads? How’s that shape your experience here?)

Because of these concerns I’ve been looking for ways to limit exposure of personal data now that Meta has begun a soft launch of Threads over the last 24 hours.

~ ~ ~

Ahead of a formal launch, Eugen Rochko, Mastodon’s creator, published a statement about the way Threads and Mastodon are supposed to work. This statement was the result of meetings he had with Meta about the way Threads was expected to work once it joined the fediverse.

See https://blog.joinmastodon.org/2023/07/what-to-know-about-threads/

Note this paragraph in particular:

Will Meta get my data or be able to track me?

Mastodon does not broadcast private data like e-mail or IP address outside of the server your account is hosted on. Our software is built on the reasonable assumption that third party servers cannot be trusted. For example, we cache and reprocess images and videos for you to view, so that the originating server cannot get your IP address, browser name, or time of access. A server you are not signed up with and logged into cannot get your private data or track you across the web. What it can get are your public profile and public posts, which are publicly accessible.

There’s still a problem here, if you think back to what researcher Aleksandr Kogan could do with Facebook’s data harvested ~2014. The network of people around those whose data had been obtained could still be deduced.

If some users outside Meta have past usernames in Facebook/Instagram/WhatsApp which match; and/or if users have had previous long-term contacts with Meta users, and/or if data from Twitter or other social media platforms can also be acquired and correlated, it wouldn’t be difficult to build out the social network of Threads users who interface with Mastodon or other fediverse platform users.

This gets around the reason why Mastodon in particular has been resistant to integrating search across the fediverse. Search was intentionally limited during Mastodon’s development to prevent swarming and brigading attacks and other forms of harassment targeting individuals, particularly those identified in minority and/or protected classes.

Consider for example the case of a gay person who associates with other gay people who know each other locally but communicate using these tools. It won’t take that much effort especially with the aid of GPT AI to to create the means to identify entire networks of gay persons related one to several degrees apart. Once identified, it wouldn’t take much to begin brigading them if enough other hostile accounts have been established. One could even imagine the reverse identification process applied in order find persons who are violently anti-gay and likely to welcome opportunities to harass gays.

Imagine, too, how this could affect young women contacting others looking for reproductive health care information.

~ ~ ~

There is a temporary saving grace: Threads is not approved in the EU. Not yet.

The server which hosts my Mastodon account is located in the EU and therefore will not yet allow Threads users access through federation.

The same server’s administrator also polled users and asked if they wanted to allow Threads to federate with this server — they voted it down.

So I guess I’m okay where I’m at for the moment.

There are fediverse servers out there which will never allow Threads to federate with them. I’ve seen a Mastodon server which has said it will never allow Meta applications to federate because it’s against their server’s terms of use to allow entities which enable genocide and crimes against humanity to do so.

Good for them.

And good for us: PressProgress editor Luke LeBrun collected the app privacy policies for Threads, Bluesky, Twitter and Mastodon for contrast and comparison:

Can’t imagine why I would have any concerns about Threads…ahem.

~ ~ ~

This is all fairly new and unfolding even as I write this. What the fediverse will look like once Threads makes full contact is anybody’s guess.

But there are several things we do know right now, with certainty:

– Meta has been and remains a publicly-held holding company for a collection of for-profit social media businesses. Its business model relies on selling ad space based on targeted markets, and selling data. This will not change short of a natural disaster like a meteor strike taking out all of Silicon Valley and the greater San Francisco area, and that may still not be enough to change the inevitable monetization of Threads and all the platform touches.

– Meta has been operating under a consent decree issued by the Federal Trade Commission since 2011 after violating users’ privacy; it violated that agreement resulting in a $5 billion fine which it has fought against paying. Meta’s track record on privacy is not good and includes the non-consensual collection of personal data by academic Aleksandr Kogan. The data was later used by Cambridge Analytica/SCL and may have been involved in influence operations during the 2016 election.

– The EU is light years ahead of the US when it comes to privacy regulations. California as a state comes closest to the EU in its privacy regulations but it shouldn’t matter which state we are in – our privacy concerns are the same across the country, and opt-in should be the standard, period. US state and federal lawmakers have been and will likely continue to be slow to take any effective action unless there is considerable pressure by the public to meet the EU’s efforts.

– Law enforcement in the US have purchased and used without a warrant personal data collected through users’ use of social media. There has been inadequate pressure by the public to make this stop and will put the health and safety of women and minority groups at risk.

Changing the direction in which this is headed requires engagement and action. By now you know the drill: contact your representatives in Congress and demand legislation to protect media users’ privacy. (Congressional switchboard: (202) 224-3121 or Resist.bot)

That’s no slip: no form of media on the internet should be immune from protecting its users’ privacy.

You should also contact your state’s attorney general and as well as your legislators and demand your state matches California’s Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) when it comes to privacy protections – at a minimum. Meeting the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) would be better yet.

I Did Nazi Crustpunk Bar Fail, Redux [UPDATE-1]

/141 Comments/in , /by

[NB: Check the byline, thanks. Updates to appear at bottom of post. /~Rayne]

Because you people will NOT stop whining about the bird-logoed crustpunk Nazi bar sinking even further below the waterline, I am putting up a dedicated post for that subject.

RULE NUMBER ONE: Nothing but Twitter and social media related comments allowed in this thread.

RULE NUMBER TWO: Do NOT take your comments about Twitter and other social media platforms to other threads.

RULE NUMBER THREE: See the first two rules, and don’t expect this site to have any power to do anything to change the crustpunk Nazi bar or other similarly centralized social media failures like Reddit and that scofflaw Meta (home of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp).

~ ~ ~

UPDATE-1 — 8:30 P.M. ET —

Here’s a rough tick-tock leading to today’s huge uptick in new Mastodon account sign-ups —

Wednesday, May 24 — Ron DeSantis’ live campaign launch via Twitter Spaces was an utter disaster; DeSantis’ supporters try desperately to put a positive spin on it.

Thursday, May 25 — Twitter’s chief engineer resigned.

Friday, May 26 — Apparently Twitter had not paid the software company which provided service for live video feeds used in Twitter Spaces.

Sunday, June 11 — Engadget reports there may be problems ahead for Twitter:

More platform instability could be in Twitter’s near future. In 2018, Twitter signed a $1 billion contract with Google to host some of its services on the company’s Google Cloud servers. Platformer reports Twitter recently refused to pay the search giant ahead of the contract’s June 30th renewal date. Twitter is reportedly rushing to move as many services off of Google’s infrastructure before the contract expires, but the effort is “running behind schedule,” putting some tools, including Smyte, a platform the company acquired in 2018 to bolster its moderation capabilities, in danger of going offline.

Thursday, June 29 — Some folks observe difficult sporadically with accessing Twitter links.

The New York Times reported new Twitter CEO Linda Yaccarino ordered Google to be paid after she spoke with the head of Google’s Cloud division.

Friday, June 30 — Persons attempting to access any Twitter page are unable to do so unless they are a logged-in registered user.

Elon Musk later confirmed access has been deliberately cut off for all outside users, claiming Twitter is being scraped aggressively.

There is a lot of speculation the service is degrading because Twitter didn’t pay Google, but NYT’s report suggested otherwise.

Saturday, July 1 — Twitter users note Twitter is down. Musk also tweets that users will be rate limited on the amount of tweets they can read each day.

Before the widespread outage, observers noted Twitter had been DDoS-ing itself:

Twitter and Mastodon user Sheldon Chang offered more detail:

Sheldon Chang 🇺🇸 @[email protected]
This is hilarious. It appears that Twitter is DDOSing itself.

The Twitter home feed’s been down for most of this morning. Even though nothing loads, the Twitter website never stops trying and trying.

In the first video, notice the error message that I’m being rate limited. Then notice the jiggling scrollbar on the right.

The second video shows why it’s jiggling. Twitter is firing off about 10 requests a second to itself to try and fetch content that never arrives because Elon’s latest genius innovation is to block people from being able to read Twitter without logging in.

This likely created some hellish conditions that the engineers never envisioned and so we get this comedy of errors resulting in the most epic of self-owns, the self-DDOS.

Unbelievable. It’s amateur hour.

#TwitterDown #MastodonMigration #DDOS #TwitterFail #SelfDDOS

Jul 01, 2023, 11:03 · Edited Jul 01, 13:02

You can see the videos he shared at the link above.

Techdirt’s Mike Masnick offered his opinion about the rate limiting:

I don’t have words for this clusterfuck except to say I expected this level of fail and worse to come, even with a new CEO on board. Good luck, Yaccarino. I hope you got a guaranteed payout.

~ ~ ~

Meanwhile, at Mastodon:

Mastodon Users @[email protected]

12,916,975 accounts
+4,614 in the last hour
+34,484 in the last day
+108,119 in the last week

[Graphic alt text: Four time-based charts

Upper blue area: Number of Mastodon users
Upper cyan area: Hourly increases of number of users
Lower orange area: Number of active instances
Lower yellow area: Thousand toots per hour

For current figures please read the text of this post]
Jul 01, 2023, 19:00

~ ~ ~

If there is more news in the next 12-24 hours about Twitter, I will update this post.