3676

That bear quote reminded me of an important piece of real news I saw on a critical site for people who want to stay woke:

Why isn’t the lamestream media covering this?!

While man government officials would like to call off the recent election due to Northern Bear Devil tampering, Trump has insisted that this should not change the results. “Yes, the Bear Devils are known scoundrels and have prowled the land above the frozen lake for many years, thirsty for blood and the removal of hands, but that does not mean that their voice should not be heard in American politics.”

When countered with the argument that this is flatly illegal, Don Trump opened his face and let thousands of tentacle cosmic horror’s spill forth in a black bubbling mass, screaming and writhing in a way that is impossible to describe using any human dialect.

3677

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey refused to allow a “CrookedHillary” emoji during the campaign, when the Trump team offered Twitter $5 million to enable it. Details from Trump’s team here.

Twitter said this about the refusal:

[quote]
“We have had specific discussions with several political organizations, including the Trump campaign, regarding branded emojis as part of broad advertising campaigns on Twitter. We believe that political advertising merits a level of disclosure and transparency that branded political emojis do not meet, and we ultimately decided not to permit this particular format for any political advertising.”[/quote]

Because Trump is a petty shit, Twitter was not invited to the tech meeting yesterday.

[quote]
RNC spokesman Sean Spicer, who is an adviser to the Trump transition, made the call to refuse an invitation to Dorsey or other Twitter executives to the meeting, which was organized by Silicon Valley investor and Facebook board member Peter Thiel, who has been an adviser to Trump. The Trump-Pence transition team also did not respond to a request for comment.

Spicer told the Washington Examiner in October, regarding the emoji dustup, that “while Twitter claims to be a venue that promotes the free exchange of ideas, it’s clear that it’s leadership’s left wing ideology literally trumps that.”

In recent days, Twitter also found itself standing apart from its Silicon Valley counterparts when it comes to Trump. It was the only major tech company to say on the record that it would refuse to participate in building a “Muslim registry” that the president-elect has proposed.[/quote]

3678

Not letting Trump do whatever he wants = bias against Trump.

3679

I know this has been said a dozen times, but our president-elect is so fucking infantile. Ugh.

3680

Keep in mind that Twitter is the only major tech company that unequivocally went on the record to say they would refuse to participate in the creation or maintenance of a “Muslim registry” for Trump.

3681

What the fuck. No, seriously. What the fuck?

Reading through the article now, I’m really hoping that is just a very ungenerous parsing of the situation. But then again, this isn’t the optimism thread!

EDIT: Okay, the vast majority just didn’t bother to respond.

3682

I’ve never heard of the intercept before. Is this considered a major news organization? It hasn’t even been around for 2 years. I can’t fault companies for not responding.

3683

One of the founding editors is Glenn Greenwald. You may have heard of him? He’s kind of a big deal in journalism.

The Intercept is very well known in tech company circles.

3684

I like to imagine that some tech companies would respond to Trump like Neo in the matrix during his interview with Agent Smith.

3685

Yeah, The Intercept is, if not big, at least a ferocious advocate of certain types of investigative journalism. They are a source I find generally reliable, even if I don’t always agree with their assessment.

3686

I’ll add it to the list of sites I visit for news. I looked it up on Alexa and it’s ranked 1,800 in the US. It seems pretty provocative trying to be so aggressive against the tech companies asking that question. I don’t begrudge people from not answering a hypothetical. After all, Trump has reneged on a number of campaign promises already, I’m not holding my breath he actually follows through on this one.

3687

Trump, being the petty dweeb he is, attacks Variety in his usual style, reports Variety.

3688

It’s all so predictable and pettily vindictive.

Trump tweets bad things about company X. Google for recent statements from company X. Yep, sure enough, company X said something bad about him, his transition team, his business, or his children in the last 24 hours.

But is he really that transparently simple, or is this part of a greater plan to quash any negativity towards him? Both?

Is it usual for the PE to meet with all the tech giants? I highly doubt many of them support him, yet are they to say no to an open invitation and paint a twitter target on their backs? Now they are all chummy with each other! What else are they going to say afterwards?

3689

I don’t know if it’s usual, but I think it’s a smart idea. The tech companies are, in my opinion, the most powerful corporate entities in the world right now, and the big ones are all based in the USA. Microsoft, Apple, Google, Amazon, Facebook, Twitter, these are the most influential companies in the world. They have made the most impact in the day to day lives of most people in the last several years. They control the flow of information to the younger generations.

3690

They honestly, and seriously, should ban his account. Just wait for him to tweet something inflammatory again, and bam! Ban, or temporary suspension. He has posted things that have caused private citizens to be doxxed, so there is a precedent here set by some neo-nazis on Twitter.

3691

It seems like it’s only a matter of time before someone in the media realizes that they can just CREATE NEWS by talking shit about Trump, since Trump will ALWAYS respond.

At this point, the only thing preventing this is journalistic integrity, but given how journalism is becoming more and more dominated by folks with no integrity, I can’t imagine this lasting.

I fully expect to see some shitty publication just say something like, “Trump sucks balls, and also eats all the dicks.” and then Trump freaking out about it, and that becoming the top story in the news cycle… and then it just repeating every week, for 4 years.

3692

That’s pretty much what HAS been happening for months! Just today with the Vanity Fair thing, they write article, he tweets, now it’s trending in FB or whatever. Then other publications right puff articles about “Trump bashes Vanity Fair”, etc. etc.

3693

But he doesn’t ALWAYS respond, that’s the thing. There are reams of negative op-eds and articles about Trump, his kids, and most especially his transition team choices all the time. Hundreds of them. He doesn’t respond to those.

Exactly. And when the news are all agog and aflutter over some ridiculous, meaningless social media comment about an equally meaningless article, the cable news pounces on it and ends up ignoring things like the government’s official statements about the Russian hacking, or the articles about his DC hotel being downright illegal, or his team’s attempts to create a blacklist of climate scientists, or him handing the reins to the nation’s nuclear regulatory commission to a man who wanted to dismantle it and then forgot that he wanted to do so, or… or… or…

Trump’s infantile tweeting is nothing of the kind. He creates these teapot-tempests specifically as shiny objects to draw the public’s attention away from what they should be talking about. And he’s REALLY good at it.

3694

3695

I’m sure you’re getting at something important but did you hear about Trump and Kanye? Let’s talk about that instead. It’s a lot easier to wrap one’s mind around.