@ericgarland These platforms gave white supremacists, conspiracy theorists and foreign-intelligence assets a captive audience without people having to leave a "legitimate" site for some neo-Nazi forum or Russian social media.
Imagine trying to coordinate sedition when social media knows it?
@ericgarland So either you give up the refined algorithms and enriched data of existing social media, which let you test and refine messaging and calls for action in real time, in exchange for losing most of your following and scattering the rest across multiple niche sites...
@ericgarland Or you try to keep coordinating across major social-media platforms which are increasingly banning your primary vectors for misinformation and deleting their messages.
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@LincolnsBible While the indifference people are showing not only to strangers but also the lives and health of their friends and loved ones is disturbing, there may be more forces driving this attitude than we imagine.
You already know about the vast, targeted psychological warfare online.
@LincolnsBible Allegedly being executed by actors such as Cambridge Analytica, Russian intelligence and other actors, via social media.
But there's another factor, built into this medium.
The steady addiction to the dopamine release of using it.
@LincolnsBible Others discuss this more in depth, but the goal of so many product manufacturers and service providers is to capture their audience by addicting them.
But even people who, say, play video games incessantly have trouble doing it all the time. They have work, school, etc.
Check me on this, but I don't think leaving out significant sources of income on your tax returns is somehow exonerated by neglecting to fill out that part of the form altogether.
@IRS_CI wanting it made *crystal* clear is understandable, however.
@ericgarland Can we all pause for a moment to appreciate the sheer genius of dropping this response to Trump's first, insane pardon, as he dangles full, sweeping pardons for *everyone* inside and outside his Administration?
The possibility of state charges puts him, personally, at risk...
People like @TheRickWilson, who have studied Trump intensely, realize he is intensely self-centered.
If there is a real possibility that each successive pardon offered in exchange for something - money, silence, loyalty, favors - increases the likelihood...
@ericgarland@TheRickWilson He will not only end up in prison, but in a *state* maximum-security prison, like Rikers Island, what are the odds he will endanger himself personally to do so?
*Worse,* what happens when that not only occurs to Trump, but to everyone relying on him for a pardon?
@markyzaguirre@TheRickWilson We've also been treating this 4-year, slow-motion explosion like new geography rather than the snapshot of a blastwave and scattering shrapnel that it is.
It's not just that none of this was sustainable.
It's how much of their reserves our adversaries burnt down to attempt it.
Lawyers going into court with spurious arguments or spouting conspiracy theories and clear falsehoods are facing far more than a stern lecture or the scorn of their peers.
@markyzaguirre@TheRickWilson See also the incredibly granular map counterintel and law enforcement now have of the offshored wealth being illegally onshored via money laundering and other illicit exchanges.
@ericgarland To employ the full power of quantum computing & a host of other tools before dictatorships could use them to destroy us, the only alternative was to let everything turn into a single, vast, interconnected crime scene.
Not so much "probable cause" as "beyond a reasonable doubt."