Why I'm not going to Parler

If you are like me, your social media timelines have been filled with people announcing that they are leaving for Parler, an alternative social media site that has been touted as the answer to censorship of tech company censorship of conservatives. While the treatment of conservatives by social media companies has sometimes been a problem, I won’t be abandoning Facebook and Twitter for Parler or Mewe. Here’s why.

The first and most obvious reason is that I don’t want any more social media accounts. I’ve been on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram for years and I’m already questioning the time I spend on these sites. I’ve gone on social media fasts in the past, but the time I spend perusing timelines has gone way up as my workload decreased in the pandemic. The last thing I need in my life is another social media account when I really should be reducing my intake of social media.

At this point, I primarily use Facebook to keep up with family and friends, many of whom are not on Parler, and Twitter for political discussions. I don’t anticipate leaving Twitter either because it is unique in that it allows you to interact directly with political figures, journalists, and columnists rather than just reading a post and leaving a comment.

Depending on how you set up your timeline, Twitter and Facebook allow a well-rounded and fully informed look at both sides of the political spectrum. I don’t think that will be true of Parler and Mewe, which are already being billed as “conservative” social media platforms.

In other words, these new sites will be a bubble of confirmation bias where Republicans don’t hear ideas that run counter to the party line. As I wrote last week, the prevalence of confirmation bias in the conservative media was a major reason that Donald Trump lost the election. Now many Republicans are doubling down on what amounts to retreating to a safe space for groupthink when what they really should be doing is engaging with undecided voters and liberals in an attempt to stress-test their beliefs and win others to their cause.

It takes a certain amount of maturity and intellectual honesty to listen to competing ideas, but if conservative ideas can stand up to scrutiny then we have nothing to fear from being challenged. For me, discussions are much more interesting when there is disagreement. I don’t like being confined to an “amen corner” where every reply to a post is a thumbs-up or people agreeing with you.

We need to hear the truth, even if it is unpleasant and shakes the foundations of our beliefs. You don’t learn about potential weaknesses in your ideas from a crowd of yes-men. That has been a serious problem for the Trump Administration.

The key to a good discussion is being able to agree in a civil manner. This is a problem with people on both sides of the political spectrum (take it from someone who draws fire from both parties). Retreating to conservative websites is not going to make people behave with more logic and civility. With the promise of less moderation and fewer differing viewpoints to learn from, the opposite is likely to be true.

If Parler and MeWe do not moderate, they are likely to quickly become cesspools of profanity, hate, conspiracy theories, obscenity, child sexual abuse, and calls to violence from factions like the Boogaloo Bois. There are indications that this is already happening. Despite billing itself as a place for “free expression without violence and a lack of censorship,” Parler has already had to have a come-to-Jesus moment with users who were testing the site’s limits by posting obscene and pornographic material. I’ve seen all of this sort of stuff on Facebook as well, but the site does try to maintain a basic community standard. Many of the areas where I’ve seen really bad stuff on Facebook are private groups that threaten to ban members who report posts.

But, you ask, what about censorship by Facebook and Twitter? I do agree that there is a bias against conservatives and Republicans but I also think that bias is overstated. In my experience, there is a culture of victimhood on the right where people push the boundaries because they get a certain amount of “street cred” for doing time in “Facebook jail” or “Twitmo.” How many times have you seen posts that begin with “Let’s see how long Zuck [Mark Zuckerberg] will leave this up” or “I’ll bet this gets Zucked?”

I have run a conservative Facebook page, “The Common Sense Conservative,” for more than a decade. In my years as a Facebook admin, I’ve only run afoul of community standards twice. The first time, several years ago, was for posting a meme that listed the two symbols for the male and female genders which were labeled “genders.” This was followed by a list of symbols for other hybrid genders which was labeled “mental disorders.” I got a warning for that one.

More recently, I received a 24-hour ban for two unspecified posts last summer. The problem with this incident was that I don’t know which posts were at issue or what community standard I violated. Facebook allowed an appeal, but there was no way to obtain more information on the case.

So why is it that I can admin a conservative page for years with almost no problems while others are banned on what seems like a weekly basis? I’ve tried to keep my page entertaining yet civil and welcomed people with differing viewpoints as long as they followed the page rules, which include no name-calling, no profanity, and generally keeping things civil. Despite these simple rules, I’ve had to ban a plethora of people over the years who can’t follow stay within the guidelines. Liberals would come to attack me out during the Obama years and now Trump supporters mob the page to call me names and cuss me out. These are the same people who get into trouble with Facebook and who see the appeal of Parler. If you’re like me and don’t want a social media experience filled with anger and insults, the new social media platforms probably aren’t for you.

Social media rules can be opaque and often seem to be applied in a biased fashion, but as I wrote earlier this year, that is permissible under Section 230, which gives social media companies a lot of leeway to moderate posts. Social media companies can and should do a better job of giving clear and objective standards and moderation, but a majority of the problems that conservatives have with social media companies could be avoided by simply being responsible users and not engaging in personal attacks, posting profanities and obscenities, and not sharing fake news and conspiracy theories. In other words, this is stuff that we, as responsible adults and discerning Christians, should be doing anyway.

Alternative social platforms are tempting for many conservatives, but ultimately they may do the movement more harm than good. Already too many on the right live in alternative reality bubbles of conspiracy theories, confirmation bias, and groupthink. Retreating from the public square to a safe space will only make that problem worse. In the end, political movements are built and parties are won by engaging opponents and winning them over, not by retreating to a safe space.

Originally published on The First TV

Facebook Is Still Up To Its Old Tricks

Less than two weeks ago, Facebook announced its intention to reform itself to address conservative concerns of bias. Facebook’s changes were in response to an audit led by former Republican Senator Jon Kyl and included an appeals process and more transparency in why content is removed by the social media platform. Now it seems that Facebook is already up to its old tricks.

On Friday, Live Action tweeted that Facebook had flagged a post stating that “abortion is never medically necessary” as “false news.” Facebook’s notification to Live Action notes that “Facebook reduces the distribution of misleading content while showing additional reporting on the same topic” and warns that “pages and websites that repeatedly publish or share misleading content will see their overall distribution reduced, their ability to monetize and advertise removed, and their ability to register as a news Page removed.”

https://twitter.com/LiveAction/status/1167547494307418112?s=20

Science Feedback, the organization that fact-checked the Live Action posts, rates the claim that “abortion is never medically necessary” as “inaccurate.” The group, which claims to be nonpartisan, argues that some medical conditions “such as pre-eclampsia, HELLP syndrome and placenta previa, in which abortion could become medically necessary in order to save the life of the mother.” The group also points out that “In order for early delivery to save both the life of mother and child, the fetus first needs to have developed sufficiently that it stands a chance of surviving outside of the womb.”

In an interview with Fox News, Live Action President Lila Rose responded, “We have doctors, OBGYNs, [who are] board-certified, who are also featured in our videos, who are saying the exact same thing. In fact, thousands of doctors agree with Live Action, with me, that abortion is not a medical treatment.”

Earlier this year, American medical leaders representing more than 30,000 doctors signed a letter at The Public Discourse which stated, “It is never necessary to intentionally kill a fetal human being to save a woman’s life.” In 1981, Surgeon General C. Everett Koop said, “The fact of the matter is that abortion as a necessity to save the life of the mother is so rare as to be nonexistent.” Even Dr. Alan Guttmacher, a former president of Planned Parenthood, said as far back as 1967, “Today it is possible for almost any patient to be brought through pregnancy alive, unless she suffers from a fatal illness such as cancer or leukemia, and, if so, abortion would be unlikely to prolong, much less save, life.”

Rose also told Fox News that Live Action had contacted Facebook and was told to contact the fact-checkers with its concerns. It seems that, with a difference in opinion between medical professionals on both sides, that Live Action’s case would be a likely candidate for Facebook’s new oversight board. Labeling Live Action as “false news” seems to be an overreaction since the controversy seems to boil down to a quibble between the word’s “never” and “hardly ever.”

Live Action is not the only conservative facing sanction from Facebook, however. I have had recent reports from members of conservative Facebook groups who say that they are still being sent to “Facebook jail” for posts that do not violate Facebook’s community standards. In one example, a meme depicting Charles Manson morphing into Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez led to two of my Facebook acquaintances receiving a 24-hour ban. The picture was what those of us in the South would refer to as “tacky,” but it didn’t seem to violate Facebook’s written standards.

One of the Facebook users shared the meme with me along with several screenshots. In violation of Facebook’s promise to be transparent, the notification only says that the post violated community standards and did not give a specific reason. The notification offered the user to “see options” in order to “learn more about this post and see what you can do.” When this option was selected, it led to a blank screen with an exclamation point icon. There was no explanation as to what community standard was violated or how to appeal to the oversight board.

As a private company, Facebook has the right to set its own rules and pick what sort of content to allow on its platform. However, if the social media giants want to be public forums for political discussion, they must do a better job of not discriminating against conservative viewpoints. Otherwise, Facebook will find many of its users migrating to competing platforms that don’t discriminate against conservative content+9. No company, no matter how big, is infallible.

Earlier this month, Facebook made a commitment to enforce its community standards with more fairness. Maybe the company is truly trying to improve how it polices conservative content, but it has a long way to go.

Originally published on The Resurgent

Facebook Makes Changes To Win Conservative Trust

The long-awaited results of Facebook’s year-long audit have been released. Unsurprisingly, the report shows that conservatives don’t trust the social media platform for a variety of reasons.

Per Axios’ exclusive report of the audit results, conservative complaints about Facebook fell into six broad categories. These include concerns that Facebook algorithms make it more difficult to spread conservative content, that community standards that label some long-held traditional beliefs as hate speech, that enforcement was biased against conservatives, that Facebook labeling an ad as “political” would jeopardize tax-exempt status, about long approval times for time-sensitive ads, and that Facebook employees writing rules and community standards were biased against conservatives.

The audit was conducted by Jon Kyl, the former Republican senator from Arizona at Facebook’s request. Kyl describes the process in the Wall Street Journal today. The audit consisted of 133 interviews with “individuals, groups, and lawmakers who either use, study or could potentially regulate Facebook,” beginning in August 2018.

In response to the audit’s findings, Facebook has already committed to a series of reforms that are specifically intended to benefit conservatives. The first reforms include:

·        Oversight board – A board will be formed to hear appeals for difficult content-removal cases.

·        Explanations of news-feed rankings – Facebook is launching “transparency tools” that will explain why the content that users see in their feed is there.

·        Page transparency – Page owners can now see when content has been removed for violating community standards and when distribution is reduced due to “false” ratings from fact-checkers.

·        Staffing – Facebook has hired four new employees to work with small groups and answer questions and complaints about content removal.

·        Ad labeling requirements -  Rather than labeling ads as “political,” ads will now be classified as “about social issues, elections or politics.”

·        Ad policies – Facebook has changed a policy that prohibited ads that showed medical tubes in patients. The change will make it easier to get pro-life ads approved.

“We believe these and other measures described in our interim report are steps in the right direction,” Kyl writes. “Yet these are complicated issues, some of which involve conflicting opinions even among conservatives. For that reason, restoring trust fully may remain an elusive goal. Conservatives no doubt will, and should, continue to press Facebook to address the concerns that arose in our survey.”

In a statement, Facebook VP of Global Affairs and Communications Nick Clegg, wrote, “Regardless of one’s own political views, this is about whether we apply our own policies fairly to all sides, and whether those policies begin with an understanding of how core groups of users express their beliefs.”

“While we err on the side of free speech, there are critical exceptions,” Clegg added. “We don’t allow content that might encourage offline harm or is intended to intimidate, exclude or silence people. And we work to slow and reduce the spread of content like debunked hoaxes and clickbait by downranking it in News Feed. We know we need to listen more as we work to strike the right balance with these policies.”

“Even if we could craft them in a way that pleased all sides, when dealing with such nuanced issues, involving policies that apply to billions of posts, we will inevitably make some bad calls, some of which may appear to strike harder at conservatives,” Clegg acknowledged.

The new reforms are merely the first step in Facebook’s attempts to fairly enforce its rules. The process is ongoing and Kyl’s team will issue another report in a few months.

Many conservatives on Facebook have spent time in “Facebook jail” for seemingly innuous posts or had content removed will understandably be skeptical of the social media giant’s commitment to fairness, but today’s announcements mark a significant victory for both conservative users of social media and free markets in general. As a private platform, the company does have the right to enforce its own rules and restrict objectionable content, but it has responded to consumer pressure to enforce its rules more fairly. This is not only good news for conservatives on Facebook but also for advocates of small government who were skeptical of conservative calls to regulate the social media platforms in the name of “fairness.”

Originally published on The Resurgent

Alex Jones, The NFL and Freedom of Speech

The conservative world – or at least the right-wing world – was rocked this week with the news that Facebook, Apple and Spotify would ban Jones and his Infowars podcasts from their sites. Much of the right-wing reaction has focused on the question of freedom of speech and whether the internet giants have a duty to provide access to Jones’ conspiratorial ramblings.

The crux of the issue is that Facebook and the other companies are private entities. Because they are not part of the government, the First Amendment does not apply. The First Amendment only protects freedom of speech from being infringed upon by Congress, not private corporations.

In Facebook’s case, the waters are muddied by CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s claims that the social media giant is “a platform for all ideas” and that he is trying to “root out” bias in the company. If the company truly welcomes all ideas, then it should allow Jones to post his ideas, as reprehensible as they are, unless he violates the site’s terms of service.

Facebook should also set an objective standard to determine what is and isn’t “hate speech” and “bullying,” the vague terms that were used to justify Jones ouster from the site. The standards should be applied to both sides of the political spectrum. The list of political leftists who use hate speech is long and filled with people who are rarely held accountable for their words. Sarah Jeong is only the most recent example.

If freedom of speech is endangered by the left, many on the right are happy to attack the free speech rights of their political opponents as well. The most glaring example is the NFL kneeling controversy. President Trump overstepped his authority last year by calling on NFL team owners to fire players who kneeled to protest during the National Anthem. Many conservatives supported the president without stopping to think that the NFL, like Facebook, is a private organization.

In either case, the appropriate action for people who disagree with how the owners of Facebook and the NFL run their businesses would be to fire them. No one is forced to have a Facebook account or watch the NFL. If enough people vote with their wallets and stop sending their money to leftist companies, these policies may eventually change. The one thing that conservatives should agree on is that the government should not tell private companies how to run their business or what they should allow.

Unfortunately, that is not the case. Both sides seem perfectly willing to abridge the free speech rights of their political opponents. That includes many on Republicans who consider the media “fake news.” A new Ipsos poll found that a plurality of Republicans, 43 percent, believe that “the president should have the authority to close news outlets engaged in bad behavior.”

The idea that Big Government should referee the freedoms of speech and press is not new to the left, but should be an anathema to small government conservatives. At the very least, Republicans in favor of restricting speech should be aware that the government’s powers of censorship would almost certainly be turned against conservative outlets – or conspiracy sites like Infowars - by the next Democratic administration.

Where Voltaire famously said, “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” Modern Americans of all political stripes say, “What you say offends me, so you must be silenced.” The First Amendment applies to me, but not you.

Justice Louis Brandeis had a better idea. Noting that “Those who won our independence were not cowards” who feared political speech, Brandeis said that, for the problem of dangerous and evil speech, the “remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence.” That’s a solution that all Americans should get behind.

Originally published on The ResurgentAlex Jones

Now Facebook Will Tell You Why You're In 'Facebook Jail'

If you’ve engaged in political discussions on Facebook, the chances are good that you have had posts deleted and even spent some time in “Facebook jail,” the euphemism for temporary bans that put users in “timeout” when they get caught posting something inappropriate. A big problem is that Facebook’s community standards were vague and unevenly applied. Many users didn’t know what standard they were accused of violating and had no way to appeal Facebook’s decision. Now that has changed.

Today Facebook released its full community standards playbook, an 8,000-word guide that is used by the company’s 7,500 moderators. The guide is split into six sections that are based on specific types of posts that can be removed. These include violence and criminal behavior, safety, objectionable content, integrity and authenticity, intellectual property and content-related requests. The company says that the standards will continue to be updated frequently.

Many of the problematic posts are straightforward, but there are many exceptions. For example, Facebook says, “we default to removing sexual imagery,” but “make allowances for the content” that fits certain criteria such as when it is “a form of protest, to raise awareness about a cause, or for educational or medical reasons.”

“We remove content that glorifies violence or celebrates the suffering or humiliation of others,” Facebook says, but “we allow graphic content (with some limitations) to help people raise awareness about issues.”

Regarding the sticky issue of hate speech, Facebook lists a number of protected categories that include “race, ethnicity, national origin, religious affiliation, sexual orientation, sex, gender, gender identity, and serious disability or disease” as well as “some protections for immigration status.” Facebook does not allow attacks, defined as “violent or dehumanizing speech, statements of inferiority, or calls for exclusion or segregation,” on these groups.

Hate speech is divided into three tiers. Tier 1 attacks are violent speech. Tier 2 attacks are “statements of inferiority.” Tier 3 attacks are calls to exclude protected groups.

There have been reports of Facebook users reposting threats that they have received and then being banned. Facebook says that if hate speech is reposted for the purpose of raising awareness, “we expect people to clearly indicate their intent, which helps us better understand why they shared it.” Otherwise the content may be removed.

When it comes to “fake news,” Facebook allows it. Noting that there is “a fine line between false news and satire or opinion,” the company says, “we don't remove false news from Facebook but instead, significantly reduce its distribution by showing it lower in the News Feed.”

Engadget points out that Facebook addressed accusations of viewpoint bias that results in uneven application of the rules in a recent blog post. “Our reviewers are not working in an empty room; there are quality control mechanisms in place, and management on site, that reviewers can look to for guidance,” the company said.

When the company makes a mistake, new policies will allow users to appeal the removal of content, Monika Bickert, Facebook’s vice president of product policy and counter-terrorism, told Reuters. In the past, only the removal of accounts, groups and pages could be appealed. Bickert also said that Facebook would begin to provide specific reasons for why the content was removed.

It’s important to remember that the First Amendment does not apply to Facebook and social media. The constitutional guarantee of free speech applies only to government restrictions. Private companies like Facebook have the right to police their communities as they see fit, but unless the companies respect freedom of speech they will ultimately chase users away to more open platforms. There has already been much talk online  from conservatives about leaving Facebook and Twitter in the wake of the news that the companies favor liberal viewpoints.  

Facebook’s new openness about community standards seems to be an attempt to fix the problem of vague standards for users. As Bickert said, “You should, when you come to Facebook, understand where we draw these lines and what’s OK and what’s not OK.”

Now if Facebook would just apply those standards evenly across the political spectrum. 

Originally published on The Resurgent

Facebook Deletes Admins On Popular Trump Page

The idea behind net neutrality was that internet users would be protected from punishment or from being restricted from internet access for their political beliefs. Unfortunately, political persecution of social media users already seems to be happening, not at the hands of the government, but by the tech companies themselves. Facebook, recently in the news for sharing data on its users with Cambridge Analytica, has a long history of stifling conservative speech. Now the administrators of a large pro-Trump Facebook page say that the company removed them from control of their page for no reason.

Thomas Pappert and Adam Rogers (a pseudonym), the administrators of the Facebook page “God Emperor Trump,” say that Facebook deleted them from their positions on the page, but did not remove the page itself or any of the posts on the page. At the time of writing, the page was still available for viewing on Facebook, but the pair say that they won't be able to post new content, other than posts that had already been scheduled when they were removed.

The page with its 335,000 followers represents three years of work for Pappert and Rogers. A press release on the Department of Memes says that the page administrators received an email from Facebook at 2:30 pm on March 29. Screen shots provided to Resurgent show a message from Facebook security that says, “You're getting this email to confirm that you're no longer an admin on God Emperor Trump.” The email instructed the admins to have another admin add them back or to contact Facebook.

“In the email we received from Facebook informing us of their decision to remove us from the page, there is a link we could click if we felt it was done improperly. When we click the link, it then leads us to another link, where we can fill out a report,” said Rogers. “When we go to this final page, the 'report' function is broken. It says Facebook had an error and to try again later.”

“It's done this for all of our admins, on different browsers, and across several different states,” he added.

The men say that their page was unpublished twice before and restored by Facebook. Rogers says that publicity from conservative media outlets helped get the page restored in those cases. “They were able to get the attention of actual humans at Facebook, who blamed the decision on an 'algorithmic failure' both times,” he says.

Whether a problematic algorithm or a rogue employee like the one who deleted President Trump's Twitter account last year, biased enforcement of social media rules is a growing problem. The lack of recourse for social media bans and the inability to contact customer service at the tech giants makes getting banned very frustrating for users.

In the wake of “fake news” and Russian bot scandals from 2016, Facebook and Twitter seem to be responding by cracking down on many conservative accounts and pages. A Project Veritas video in January revealed Twitter executives admitting to using “shadow bans” to censor conservative viewpoints. Twitter seems to easily verify liberal accounts while those on the right (including the author) have difficulty getting the accreditation. Conservative pages on Facebook have seen their circulation drop in the wake of new algorithms that prioritize “news that is trustworthy, informative, and local” in Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg's words.

Because the social media companies are not the government, the First Amendment does not apply. Private companies can allow or ban posts and users as they see fit. Some, including Zuckerberg, are calling for regulation of the companies to force them to do the right thing with regard to privacy and free speech, but, as the IRS scandal from the Obama Administration shows, even the government can't be trusted to be impartial.

If social media companies want to censor conservative speech, the only other option might be for conservatives to leave the platforms and go to sites that are specifically created for conservatives. This approach has been taken by members of the alt-right who have created alternative sites where their views are accepted.

Social media sites have every right to run their businesses as they see fit, but forcing conservatives to flee to other platforms would be bad for the country as we divide ourselves further into opposing camps that interact with each other less and less. We already have separate news channels and websites. Facebook and Twitter are among the few places where Americans hear opposing viewpoints.

It would also be bad for stockholders if censorship drives users and ad revenue away. Facebook, a company less than 20 years old, has a near monopoly on social media now, but monopolies don't last forever and forcing users to develop competing platforms may accelerate the process of turning Facebook into the next Standard Oil.

Former Facebook Exec Says Social Media Is Ripping Society Apart

There are plenty of voices decrying the pernicious effects of social media on society, but when one of those voices is an architect of Facebook’s rise to near omnipresence, it draws a bit more attention. That was the case when Chamath Palihapitiya, a former Facebook executive, spoke to a group of graduate students at the Stanford University School of Business last month.

“I feel tremendous guilt,” Palihapitiya, currently the CEO of Social Capital and owner of the Golden State Warriors, said. “I think we all knew in the back of our minds — even though we feigned this whole line that there probably aren’t any really bad unintended consequences — I think in the back deep, deep recesses of our minds, we kind of knew something bad could happen, but I think the way we defined it was not like this.”

“It literally is at a point now,” he continued, “where I think we have created tools that are ripping apart the social fabric of how society works. That is truly where we are.”

Palihapitiya explained how online popularity is a vicious circle, prompting more and more outlandish and extreme behavior to keep the “likes” coming. “The short-term dopamine driven feedback loops that we have created are destroying how society works,” he said. “No civil discourse, no cooperation, misinformation, mistruth.”

“We curate our lives around the perceived sense of perfection,” he added, “because we get rewarded in these short-term signals. Hearts, likes, thumbs up, and we conflate that with value, and we conflate it with truth. And instead, what it really is, is fake, brittle popularity.”

“It is eroding the core foundations of how people behave,” Palihapitiya said.

To anyone on Facebook or Twitter who has ever watched their post go viral, this sounds familiar. The feeling of validation that comes from a popular post is psychologically comforting, but also addictive. You want to keep the affirmation coming. That requires more viral posts

The easy way to get your posts noticed above all the background noise of the internet is to be extreme. The truth of the parental wisdom that some children misbehave because any attention is better than being ignored is proven everyday online.

“I don’t have a good solution,” he said. “My solution is I just don’t use these tools anymore.” He also said that he does not allow his children to use social media.

“You don’t realize it, but you are being programmed,” Palihapitiya said. “It was unintentional, but now you have to decide how much you’re willing to give up.”

While social media is not inherently evil, it is engineered to keep users coming back so that companies like Facebook and Twitter can generate more revenue from advertising and other services. The ultimate solution is for people to discipline themselves to limit their consumption of social media sites. For some, that might mean deleting the apps from your phone to keep yourself from compulsively checking your notifications every few minutes. Others might find it necessary to delete their accounts altogether.

The world can live without knowing our political opinions or what we had for dinner. We can live without knowing all the little details of other people’s lives as well. We have one life to live. We should make the most of it. Each of us must decide whether we want a real life or virtual one.

“If you feed the beast,” Palihapitiya said “that beast will destroy you.”

Originally published on The Resurgent

Russia Purchased Black Lives Matter Facebook Ad

Evidence is mounting of Russian involvement in the 2016 election, but the evidence does not always fit the preconceived notion that Putin’s government acted to help Donald Trump’s campaign defeat Hillary Clinton. A new revelation that a Facebook ad purchased by the Russians promoted Black Lives Matter casts doubt on the usual narrative.

CNN reports the Russians bought “at least one” Facebook ad that promoted the Black Lives Matter movement. The ad appeared in late 2015 or early 2016 to audiences in Ferguson, Missouri and Baltimore, Maryland. Ferguson and Baltimore were the subject of race riots in August 2014 and April 2015 respectively.

The ad was purchased by what CNN refers to as “accounts linked to the Russian government-affiliated troll farm known as the Internet Research Agency.” US military intelligence has described the group as “a state-funded organization that blogs and tweets on behalf of the Kremlin.”

Facebook previously revealed that about 25 percent of the 3,000 ads traced back to the Internet Research Agency were geographically targeted. The Black Lives Matter ad targeted to Ferguson and Baltimore Facebook users is the first specific example of such targeting. CNN’s sources said the wording of the ad was such that it could be interpreted as both supporting and warning against the Black Lives Matter movement. The ad itself has not been released by Facebook.

Information on the Facebook ads purchased by the Russians seems to indicate that, at least early in the election cycle, the focus was on promoting division and anger rather than promoting a specific candidate. The Russians also bought ads with topics such as gun rights, immigration and the validity of western democracy.

“This is consistent with the overall goal of creating discord inside the body politic here in the United States, and really across the West,” Steve Hall, a former CIA officer and current CNN National Security Analyst, said. “It shows they the level of sophistication of their targeting. They are able to sow discord in a very granular nature, target certain communities and link them up with certain issues.”

Last December, the FBI and the CIA publicly agreed that intelligence showed that Russian cyber operations during the election were aimed at supporting the Trump campaign. In July 2017, Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats told NBC News that there was no disagreement among US intelligence agencies that the Russians “are trying to undermine Western democracy,” but stopped short of stating that the interference was targeted to benefit Trump.

In the months since the election, many on the right have pooh-poohed the idea that Russia interfered in the election at all, attributing the claim of interference to sour grapes by Clinton campaign. That may change as more information about Russian interference comes out, such as the recent revelation by Homeland Security that 21 state election agencies were targeted by Russian hackers and that the Russian goal was to stir the pot by promoting hostility on both sides of the political spectrum.

The biggest question about Russian meddling is what to do about it. As CIA Director Mike Pompeo told NBC News, “This threat is real. The U.S. government, including the Central Intelligence Agency, has to figure out a way to fight back against it and defeat it. And we're intent upon doing that.”

Originally published on The Resurgent

Facebook bans conservative meme

Screenshot of Facebook notification (David W. Thornton)

It looks like Facebook is at it again. The social media giant has a history of bias against conservatives and was the subject of criticism in May after whistleblowers revealed that Facebook employees suppressed conservative news on the site. In recent weeks, owners of conservative sites say that Facebook banned a meme that called transgenders “mental disorders.”

The meme in question, shown nearby, shows 32 gender symbols. The list starts with the traditional Mars and Venus symbols for male and female, but then includes new symbols ranging from various transgender symbols to “androgyne” to “demiagender (with third gender).” The two traditional genders were circled in green and labeled “genders.” The other 30 symbols were circled in red and labeled “mental disorders.”

In at least two cases, Facebook has unilaterally removed the meme from conservative Facebook pages while offering no recourse or appeal for the page owners.

Devin Pelkey, owner of the Conservative Soapbox page on Facebook, said, “My account was logged out on my phone, the Pages Manager [app] and Messenger [app]. I was asked to voluntarily suspend my page to remove other content that violated the Facebook terms of service.” Pelkey said that he was not the creator of the meme.

The notification that Facebook sent includes a link to Facebook’s community standards. There was no indication which standard was violated, but presumably it fell under the “encouraging respectful behavior” heading. The preface to the section reads:

People use Facebook to share their experiences and to raise awareness about issues that are important to them. This means that you may encounter opinions that are different from yours, which we believe can lead to important conversations about difficult topics. To help balance the needs, safety, and interests of a diverse community, however, we may remove certain kinds of sensitive content or limit the audience that sees it.

In the same section, under “hate speech,” the standards state:

Facebook removes hate speech, which includes content that directly attacks people based on their:

·         Race,

·         Ethnicity,

·         National origin,

·         Religious affiliation,

·         Sexual orientation,

·         Sex, gender, or gender identity, or

·         Serious disabilities or diseases.

But did the meme constitute hate speech? Was it an attack on people for their gender identity?

According to Psychology Today, gender dysphoria is a real mental disorder:

Gender dysphoria (formerly Gender Identity Disorder) is defined by strong, persistent feelings of identification with the opposite gender and discomfort with one's own assigned sex that results in significant distress or impairment. People with gender dysphoria desire to live as members of the opposite sex and often dress and use mannerisms associated with the other gender. For instance, a person identified as a boy may feel and act like a girl.

The American Psychological Association website says “a psychological state is considered a mental disorder only if it causes significant distress or disability.” It then goes on to say, “According to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5), people who experience intense, persistent gender incongruence can be given the diagnosis of ‘gender dysphoria.’ Some contend that the diagnosis inappropriately pathologizes gender noncongruence and should be eliminated. Others argue that it is essential to retain the diagnosis to ensure access to care.”

In other words, the APA recognizes gender dysphoria but doesn’t consider it a mental disorder unless it is upsetting to the individual. This is in spite of the fact that the APA acknowledges that gender dysphoria is listed as mental disorder in psychological manuals.

Last year, former Johns-Hopkins psychiatrist-in-chief Dr. Paul McHugh wrote in the Wall St. Journal that gender confusion “constitutes a mental disorder in two respects. The first is that the idea of sex misalignment is simply mistaken—it does not correspond with physical reality. The second is that it can lead to grim psychological outcomes.”

Facebook seems to be allowing liberal bias to outweigh scientific reality in the case of speech critical of transgenders. At the very least, there is a robust debate about whether transgender is a mental disorder. Facebook’s own community standards purport to support such an “important conversation.”

Jeff Thomas, an administrator for The Common Sense Conservative page, said that his page had the same experience as Pelkey’s Conservative Soapbox. The post had been up for about a week and was generating a lot of attention and discussion, which Facebook says it encourages. Then, with no warning, the post was suddenly removed.

When Facebook removes a post, the person who posted it is notified. They have to click “continue” on the notification to get back to their account. There is no appeal if the decision is wrong or unfair. In fact, it is very difficult to contact Facebook about anything. Facebook’s help tab contains a link to “contact your grievance officer” that only works in India, but there is also a “give us feedback” link that allows users to send a message to Facebook.

Thomas says that the administrators for the page sent a feedback message to Facebook explaining about gender dysphoria. So far, they have not received a reply other than a form email that says that “we can’t respond to your emails individually, but we are paying attention to them.”

Thomas and Pelkey are both unhappy with the outcome in which an anonymous Facebook user used Facebook’s bureaucracy to quash a lively debate over an interesting and unsettled scientific and cultural topic with real-world implications.

“It’s some bullshit is what it is,” noted Pelkey.

Disclosure: The author is owner of the Common Sense Conservative page.

Read it on Conservative Firing Line 

Bernie Sanders tweet quoting Marx is fake

Yesterday an alarming tweet by Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders went viral. The tweet contained the radical message, “My object in life is to dethrone God and destroy capitalism.” The big problem is that the tweet is fake.

The phrase in the tweet is actually attributed to Karl Marx, German revolutionary and the father of communism. The quote does not appear in “The Communist Manifesto,” Marx’s most famous work or any of his other known writings, but is similar to a documented quote from “Revelations Concerning the Communist Trial in Cologne.” In that work, Marx wrote, “If I dethrone God I also dethrone the king who reigns by the grace of God.”

Bernie Sanders, a sitting senator from Vermont, is an avowed socialist. While the line between socialism and communism is thin and blurred, Sanders seems to shy away from vocally supporting communist countries like the Soviet Union and China. Instead, he lavishes praise on the democratic socialism of Scandinavian countries like Denmark, Norway and Sweden according to Oregon Live.

Steven Wolf of Daily Kos notes that Sanders “Sanders advocates for three things that should be the backbone of the Democratic Party. These include reducing economic inequality, removing the rigged influence of the rich on our political system, and of course most importantly, preventing climate change.” He calls Sanders a social democrat “despite his chosen label of democratic socialist” and notes that this breed of politician wants to “ensure that every person has access to housing, health care, education, meaningful employment, and transportation.” With the exception of reducing the influence of the rich on politics, this makes Sanders almost indistinguishable from other Democrats, including Hillary Clinton.

It must be noted that the reference to “dethroning God” can apply to many modern Democrats as well. Democrats have shown a hostility to the free expression of religion in recent years including loud opposition to religious freedom laws. In 2012, an attempt to add a reference to God to the Democratic platform resulted in loud, almost overwhelming, boos.

Sanders, who is Jewish, is not religious, but does not seem overtly hostile to religion. According to the Christian Post, he is more likely to pick and choose from various religious texts to find passages that support his views. For her part, Hillary Clinton said in a speech last March that “deep-seated cultural codes, religious beliefs and structural biases have to be changed” to make way for more progressive policies according to the Daily Caller.

While Sanders might or might not agree with the Marx quote, he apparently never tweeted it. A review of the timeline of the Sen. Sanders Twitter account does not show the offending tweet. The time stamp on the tweet is August 10, 2015 at 9:27 p.m. There is a tweet on the Sanders timeline at the same time, but with a different message. The actual Sanders tweet reads, “The cost of war is real. It is terrible. I believe that war should be the last resort, not the first resort.”

A comparison of the two tweets reveals a subtle difference. The fake tweet shows the date is numeric characters while the authentic tweet uses the word “August” in the date. This may simply reflect a difference in device or settings.

Examiner traced the fake tweet to the Facebook account of John Trulli. Trulli’s Facebook wall contains a post claiming responsibility for the fake tweet: “Lol [sic] I'm still getting notifications for people sharing that fake Bernie sanders tweet I made. Hundreds of shares and everyone's pissed that he said that.”

The post immediately above Trulli’s admission of responsibility is another fake Sanders tweet. This one reads, “Pretty much everything I say is a lie lol [sic]. My closest friends growing up called me Bernie Slanders.” Further examination of his timeline shows other tweets supposedly by George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.

An attempt was made to contact the Sanders campaign in connection with this article, but no reply was received. Sanders leads Mrs. Clinton by a small margin in the latest New Hampshire poll.

Read the full article on Examiner.com

Settlement in Kolfage lawsuit with alleged trolls

Two years ago, the conservative internet community was in the midst of a campaign of harassment by a group of liberal “trolls” who called themselves “goats.” “Trolling” is an internet term that essentially refers to cyber-bullying, harassing people online and, sometimes in the real world as well. The secret group was led by a shadowy figure known as “Busta Troll.” Now the law may have caught up with some alleged trolls.

Last year, Senior Airman Brian Kolfage, a conservative activist and owner of WoundedAmericanWarrior.com, filed a lawsuit against seven of the alleged trolls. The lawsuit alleged assault, slander and libel against Kolfage. Kolfage, who lost both legs and one arm in Iraq in 2004, became a frequent target of the goats and trolls online according to Military.com. The harassment allegedly even extended to harassment of the Kolfages and their relatives at home, school and work.

Kolfage declined to be interviewed for this article citing ongoing legal proceedings and court orders, but spoke last year to Fox 10 Phoenix, saying, “The same people would write stuff on my Facebook page, and the stuff they would write is just horrendous. They would say they wished I had died, they said I was a drain on the government system, just really nasty stuff. I started sharing the comments, and it went viral. Because I was just fed up with it.” He added, “And once they brought my family into it, and tried to do things against my family, and ruin my wife's career, I decided I needed to take legal action to stop it.”

Court documents reveal that five of the seven recently reached an agreement with Kolfage and his wife. The settlement agreement was reached between the Kolfages and Nathanial Downes of Puyallup, WA; Justine Grant of North Fort Myers, FL; Paul Loebe of Nashville, TN; John Prager of Wheeling, WV; and Kenneth Vanderzanden of Beaverton, Oregon. Three of these defendants are reportedly bloggers for Addicting Info, a popular liberal site.

Two defendants, Louis Caponecchia of Toledo, OH and Darren Remington of Nashville, TN, did not join in the settlement. The lawsuit against these defendants is still proceeding.

As a result of the agreement, the lawsuit was dismissed while keeping in place an agreement that required both sides to not “disparage one another going forward in the future and that they won't take action through third parties to disparage one another. And that to the extent that they have the power to affect, they will, in good faith, attempt to remove anything that is disparaging that's within their control” from the internet. The agreement stipulates that all parties would call the settlement “equitable.”

An additional agreement between the Kolfages and Paul Loebe requires Mr. Kolfage to write an acknowledgement for publishing the personal information of Jan Vrotsos in retaliation for her alleged post calling him “a worthless fake hero” among other things. Mr. Kolfage also agreed to express regret for anything said or done to Vrotsos as a result. This acknowledgement will be delivered to Mr. Loebe by June 30. Ms. Vrotsos has since been shown to be innocent of posting the remark.

A blogger pointed out that some of the defendants may have violated the terms of the agreement with posts after the lawsuit was dismissed, but these posts have since been deleted. At this point, seems that both sides are trying to live up to the settlement agreement.

An attempt was made to contact the defendants and the Kolfages for more information about the case. The first response was from Darren Remington, whose case is still pending. Remington alleges that it was Kolfage who aggressively stalked and intimidated critics online. He and his partner have filed a suit against the Kolfages, their attorney and another conservative blogger, Scott Kuhnen. Remington denies that he has ever been a “goat” or a “troll” and says that he is a “registered conservative Republican.”

Louis Caponecchia also denies being a goat or a troll, saying, “I never hid my identity.” He also claims to have been the victim of harassment by conservative fans of Kolfage, who he says, “purchased a background report on me, called my military service fraudulent, he and his father and others prank called my father, mother and sister, as well as my cell phone dozens of times a day.” He alleges that the Vrotsos post was fabricated and asserts a willingness to debate at any time. According to Politichicks, Kolfage stated in 2014 that he had also come to the conclusion that Vrotsos was innocent.

Caponecchia says, “Kolfage will never win, nor get one penny. And when its [sic] over, I'm going to punch Brian Kolfage in the face numerous times, and laugh as he flails his one arm around, screaming for help.”

Paul Loebe, who also denies being a goat or a troll, calls the settlement fair and says that he has offered Kolfage the “opportunity to help me amend, retract, or correct any mistakes in the new article. He has tacitly refused my offer and sent my wife threatening messages towards her and my daughter as a result.” When asked for details, Loebe declines to comment, but says, “I would like to resolve this without court proceedings if at all possible.”

Loebe also discusses the case in a May 31 article on Patheos, two days after the final order in the case. In his blog, he alleges that the lawsuit “did not appear to be a way to stop the bullying he stated he was receiving. Instead, it gave the appearance as a way to quell any dissent.” Loebe claims that he did not know the other defendants until they met through the lawsuit.

Nathaniel Downes also denies being a troll, saying he has a “prejudice against trolls in general” after having been trolled himself. He calls the settlement “a meeting of the minds.”

“I may not agree with the Kolfages' politics or positions,” Downes says, “but remember your Heinlein, ‘I never learned from a man who agreed with me.’ I wish them luck in their future endeavors and a long, peaceful life.” Downes says that he is writing a detailed book about the lawsuit.

John Prager also denies being a goat or a troll. It should be noted that all of the defendants denied guilt in the harassment of Kolfage and his family. The court did not determine guilt or innocence of the parties.

A blogger pointed out that some of the defendants may have violated the terms of the agreement with posts after the lawsuit was dismissed, but these posts have since been deleted. At this point, seems that both sides are trying to live up to the settlement agreement.

The best lesson from the lawsuit may be that people should remember that they are dealing with real people when they argue online. Tempers flare and, in the anonymity of the social media world, people say and do things that they would not in a face-to-face confrontation. This is especially true of those who use fake online personas. As the legal world catches up to technology, it is likely that there will be more cases involving cyber-bullying and stalking. People will be forced to pay a price in time, worry and legal fees to defend things that they said or did in online rants. The best answer is to think before you type.

Last year, Kolfage’s lawyer, Logan Elia, told Fox 10, “He did everything he could beforehand to get these people to stop. He begged them to stop online, he attempted to clear his own reputation. Nothing he did led them to backing off, in fact they just became more aggressive in their pursuit of him.” If Kolfage’s goal was stop the harassment and to have the defamatory posts removed, the lawsuit can be judged a success since both sides seem to be enjoying a fragile online peace.

DISCLOSURE: David Thornton’s Examiner articles are republished on Brian Kolfage’s WoundedAmericanWarrior.com.

Response to the Busta Troll hoax

In light of the revelations regarding the hoax of Busta Troll’s alleged outing and retirement, I feel that a few personal comments are necessary to complete the record.

First, the world of Facebook politics, goats and trolls is a shadowy world where many people on both sides protect their anonymity with fake names and “alts,” fictitious accounts. “Busta Troll” is simply one (or possibly several) of many people with a fake identity on Facebook. With such a high premium placed on anonymity, it can be extremely hard to verify who is who and what is true.

This is not to say that I posted the article without fact-checking. Busta suggests that searches for “Christopher Lyman” in Orono, Maine would yield no results. This is not true. I found several results for Christopher Lyman in Maine, some close enough to the Orono area that they could be considered legitimate hits. What I did not find was a phone number that I could use to call and make a direct verification.

Addresses are funny things. Depending on the area, who one is talking to, and what medium is used, a person might give different answers to the question of “Where do you live?” For example, a person from New York City might answer that he lives in Queens, the neighborhood of Astoria, or on 50^th Street in addition to saying that he lived in New York. All three different answers could be equally truthful. In smaller towns, the address might be a post office in the larger city nearby, but a small, unincorporated community could legitimately be listed as a hometown on a medium such as Facebook.

Additionally, I attempted to check the legitimacy of Kevin Kopper, another anonymous source. No one seemed to know who Kopper was, but everyone seemed to consider him legitimate. Anyone who has seen the goats harass people online could understand Kopper’s desire for anonymity.

When dealing with anonymous sources, especially on the internet, there is always the chance that they are lying or are not who they claim to be. This is particularly true when dealing with goats who, by definition, base their online personas and actions on deception and dishonesty. That turned out to be the case with both Christopher Lyman and Kevin Kopper. Nevertheless, the information in the article was the best available at the time.

As it turned out, the deception was only half false. Christopher Lyman was Busta Troll. When I submitted a series of questions in good faith to Lyman, it was Busta who answered them as he admits in his video. Busta trumpets the fact that I published his unedited replies, but that was always the point. I submitted the questions to him because I and my readers wanted to know what made a liberal troll tick, why they do what they do. By definition, an interview is an attempt to find out what someone else thinks and to communicate it to others. In that, I was successful. The fact that Busta’s answers were not based in fact is an indictment of him and not me. I chose not to rebut Busta’s answers in the interview piece because that was not its purpose, but I can do so here.

First, I must agree with Busta that it irks me to see “ridiculous rumors that can be easily debunked by five minutes of searching Google.” In fact, I’ve written more than a few “tinfoil hat” articles that debunk conspiracy theories from the right. Some recent examples include the rumors that Barack Obama was planning to run for an unconstitutional third term and that Obamacare would make beheadings legal in the U.S. Where I disagree with Busta and his trolls is their notion that people with “ridiculous” ideas don’t have as much right to share them as anyone else. The best cure for ridiculous and untruthful speech is more speech.

Further, Busta seems to have a partisan view of what is “ridiculous.” I’m not aware of any liberal pages ever being goated in spite of the fact that there are some liberals spout stories just as outlandish as any conservative site. In fact, the idea that Barack Obama is not a “natural born” U.S. citizen is not a right wing idea at all; this conspiracy theory has its roots in a 2007 memo from Mark Penn, Hillary Clinton’s chief strategist, according to Businessweek. Further, as late as 2011, Politico reported that more than half of Democrats subscribed to 9/11 conspiracy theories propagated by liberals such as Michael Moore.

Second, Busta’s claim that page owners “posted pure hate and lies” and “refused to talk about it, listen to reason or even debate in a civil manner” is not true in every case. Some page owners had posted indefensible material such as the infamous “noose” meme. Others were guilty only of operating conservative pages.

I first became aware of the goats when they took my friend Jason Doolin’s “Citizens’Post” Facebook page. Doolin did post the “noose” meme “in an attempt to defend the original poster.” The goats never contacted him with their objections to the meme, however. In fact, Doolin says that he doesn’t think that he realized that they existed prior to their hijacking his page.

As I described in an article in January, a goat purporting to be Patrick Blair contacted Doolin and several others with promises to help them expand their page reach. Blair claimed to be a representative of the Freedom Alliance, a real organization. The goats say that they were given control of the pages and that they have done nothing wrong. In reality, their actions are a textbook example of fraud. In other cases, their actions could be considered slander, harassment, and cyber stalking.

In fact, the trolls seem to be part of a left wing that is focused on shutting down debate through harassment and intimidation. Some of the most famous harassment of conservatives came during and after California’s “Prop 8” definition of marriage campaign in 2008. The blog Tom O’Halloran has compiled a list of incidents against Prop 8 supporters that include harassing emails and phone calls, attempts to jeopardize employment, vandalism, threats and actual acts of violence. Liberals are attempting to use campaign disclosure laws and other means to attempt to intimidate other conservatives as well. The ultimate fulfillment of the liberal intention to stifle debate is the Udall Amendment which would gut the First Amendment and allow Congress to regulate money “that may be spent by, in support of, or in opposition to” candidates.

Third, Busta’s concerns about conservative harassment and endangering children were revealed to be totally false. In fact, it was Busta himself who put an innocent man, the real Christopher Lyman, a firefighter in Maine, in danger of losing his job. By citing his fictitious role as an umpire in a real Little League, Busta also was the one who brought innocent children into a potentially dangerous situation. In essence, Busta did what he accused conservatives of doing. If anyone endangered children, it was Busta himself. The fact that Busta claims to have planned the hoax for more than a year speaks volumes as well.

For what it’s worth, I do have to admit to laughing at a number of goat memes. There are some clever and creative people among the goats and trolls. The problem is how they use their talents as a tool for bullying and conning others. Perhaps they will take to heart the words of President Obama who said, “Bullying can have destructive consequences for our young people. And it's not something we have to accept.” In 2011, Obama pointed out that “bullying is just a harmless rite of passage or an inevitable part of growing up.” It doesn’t make it better when the behavior is that of adults.