In case you missed it, Gab got hacked again, by the same intruder after it failed to revoke admin session tokens.

More proof that the faulty cognitive processes that lead to belief in illogical ideas also makes it harder for them to spread w/o help
arstechnica.com/information-te…
Deplatforming works as a societal protection mechanism because extremists cannot disseminate their views effectively unless others build the platforms for them.

Their broken-brain understanding of reality also means that they can't build propaganda infrastructure.
You can't effectively change reality unless you actually understand it. But if competent and normal people make giant social networks and then let you use them for free and without consequence, you don't have to learn a thing. They've subsidized your insanity.

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More from @mattsheffield

9 Mar
The entire concept and history of the word "RINOs" is about silencing dissent. Conservatives invented "cancel culture."

The whining about it today is only because it happens to them sometimes now. They think only others should be canceled.
Don't be surprised also if Trump's tantrum about "RINOs" and the GOP turns out to be nothing more than a ploy to force the RNC to pay him money to use his name.
The cash for Trump angle is very important here. He has millions of dollars in debt coming due but no banks want to loan him money to refinance it.

While Trump did con supporters into giving "election defense" millions, he can't legally use it since it was PAC donations.
Read 5 tweets
24 Feb
After months of work, @DiscoverFlux is now live. Please check it out: flux.community

We're taking a different approach to news, one that's community-driven, non-profit, and designed to open the national conversation to people who have been ignored...
Everyone's always saying that we live in the "Information Age" which means information is our society's most valuable commodity. So why have we entrusted it primarily to companies whose sole motive is profit? We need more non-profit news operations.
At the same time, because of economies of scale, national media executives have overwhelmingly concentrated jobs in Manhattan and DC, leaving the vast majority of America utterly ignored.

Over the decades, this has engendered apathy, hatred, and harmed social knowledge.
Read 8 tweets
17 Feb
Thread: Rush Limbaugh and the conservative Id

On the day of his passing, it's worth doing a brief retrospective on how Rush Limbaugh's personal life almost perfectly paralleled American conservatism...
One thing that's not commonly known about Rush Limbaugh is that he began his career in sports, doing sales for the Kansas City Royals baseball team. That's significant because much of the tribalism and dumbed-down rhetoric in American TV news directly came from sports media.
Television journalism in its earliest days was a fantastic product with real investigative reporting, no filibustering live interviews, and no soundbites. This began changing in the 1970s when ABC Sports president Roone Arledge was put in charge of ABC News.
Read 25 tweets
15 Feb
You probably saw that interview that CBS's @LanaZak did with the Trump attorney in which he attacked her for restating his argument. Zak was an unflappable pro, but the episode illustrates how traditional TV training doesn't work with complete liars.
Van der Veen acted like a misogynist jerk, continually interrupting Zak. This was a moment where the executive producer should have stood up for her/his reporter and ordered the guest mic cut.

VDV was ignorantly spouting off. Stop the spew to get the convo back on track.
If you're not ready to immediately stop and counter a torrent of deceitful abuse, then you should not subject your hosts to such unprofessional and vicious guests. Zak still did very well, but this was a failure of the CBS suits.
Read 4 tweets
14 Feb
It seems like the Atlantic learned absolutely nothing from the in-depth publicity it gave to white nationalist trolls. Now it's giving big interviews to Christian nationalist trolls theatlantic.com/politics/archi…
The first sentences of the article demonstrate why it shouldn't have been written. The guy is a dimwitted bloviator whose only pitch is being actively bigoted and naive.

"Exposing him" is shooting fish in a barrel and only promotes him when a big platform does it.
Read 7 tweets
9 Feb
Two things to keep in mind as the #impeachment trial begins:

1) McConnell could have tried Trump while he was president but refused

2) GOPers who want to dismiss never say what punishment Trump should receive. Therefore they likely want no punishment for his sedition.
The first one is a very typical McConnell ploy BTW. Manipulate the process in order to make a procedural argument to avoid forcing GOP to cast a moral vote.

Unfortunately, both Schumer and Pelosi played right into this strategy. McConnell has run circles around them for years.
The entire posture of elite GOPersis evident here. They know that Trump & others are dangerous extremists but because they're useful, McConnell et al will choose to enable them to preserve power.

It has the added advantage that process debates turn off the public which they want
Read 9 tweets

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