patrick.net

https://twitter.com/SonnyBunch/status/1722712643306147866

https://twitter.com/America1stLegal/status/1723810894197477489

https://thehighwire.com/news/the-fcc-just-voted-to-take-control-of-the-internet/

The FCC voted today on a plan that gives the Federal government full control over the Internet. The plan passed by a 3-2 margin. A press release posted immediately after the meeting stated, in part, “Under the new rules, the Commission can investigate possible instances of discrimination of broadband access, work with companies to solve problems, facilitate mediation, and, when necessary, penalize companies for violating the rules. The FCC will review consumer complaints of digital discrimination of access through an improved consumer complaint portal and staff will meet monthly to assess trends in complaint patterns. Finally, the Commission adopted model policies and best practices that will support states, local and Tribal governments in their efforts to combat digital discrimination.”

The decision means that the Biden Administration is well on its way to implementing the plan that FCC commissioner Brendan Carr said “…reads like a planning document drawn up in the faculty lounge of a university’s Soviet Studies Department.” Commissioner Carr sent out his letter of dissent last week to warn the public about this “unlawful power grab” that “chooses central planning over free market capitalism.”

Patrick says

Ernest Ramirez says he wanted to do the right thing for his son, so he decided to have 16-year-old Ernesto take the COVID-19 vaccine.

After all, what was the harm? Ramirez was told the vaccine was 100 percent safe.

Five days later, on April 24, 2021, his son died from complications related to an enlarged heart, Ramirez told LifeSiteNews.

https://twitter.com/kevinnbass/status/1725658863448347052

Ernest Ramirez’s 16-yo son died 5 days after receiving the Pfizer COVID vaccine.

FEMA then contacted Mr. Ramirez and offered to pay for his son’s burial so long as he would report that he died from COVID, not the vaccine.

https://unherd.com/2023/11/moderna-is-spying-on-you/

Far from viral deception, much of the content flagged by Moderna as “misinformation” and a supposed danger to public health was nothing of the sort, it was legitimate discussion of vaccine-related issues. But the Moderna misinformation reports, reported here for the first time, reveal what the pharmaceutical company is willing to do to shape public discourse around its marquee product. And, even affect policy-making.

Moderna did incredibly well out of the pandemic. It was shot from a fledgling biotech firm to a household name, having created one of the most effective vaccines during the outbreak. The mRNA Covid-19 vaccine catapulted the company to a $100 billion valuation and minted five new billionaires, including the chief executive, Stéphane Bancel, its chairman, Noubar Afeyan, co-founder Robert Langer, president Stephen Hoge, and Timothy Springer, a Harvard Medical School professor and early investor. ...

Behind the scenes, the marketing arm of the company has been working with former law enforcement officials and public health officials to monitor and influence vaccine policy. Key to this is a drug industry-funded NGO called Public Good Projects. According to documents we have seen, PGP works closely with social media platforms, government agencies and news websites to confront the “root cause of vaccine hesitancy” by rapidly identifying and “shutting down misinformation”. A network of 45,000 healthcare professionals are given talking points “and advice on how to respond when vaccine misinformation goes mainstream”, according to an email from Moderna.

Moderna’s disinformation arm is perpetuating the public discourse wars that have been raging since early in the pandemic, aimed at shutting down anything that might undermine Covid-19-related policies, including lockdowns and efforts to encourage mass vaccinations. These documents provide a new window into the process that has roiled speech debates over the last three years. ...

But despite the growing backlash against social media censorship, the network of fact-checking nonprofits has grown at an industrial pace, providing opaque opportunities for private and public interests to take subtle control over the public discourse. Such sophistication in blending public-health messaging and corporate advertising should concern anyone with an interest in how government controls free speech.

“This is an interesting peek behind the disinformation industry, what it actually does,” said Kheriaty, the bioethicist. ”It’s about controlling a narrative, controlling the flow of information, controlling how people think about public policy, like the vaccine mandate, and how people think about a particular product that a corporation is profiting from,” he added. “It’s deeply disturbing.”

https://public.substack.com/p/ctil-files-1-us-and-uk-military-contractors

The whistleblower's documents describe everything from the genesis of modern digital censorship programs to the role of the military and intelligence agencies, partnerships with civil society organizations and commercial media, and the use of sock puppet accounts and other offensive techniques. ...

In truth, the building of the Censorship Industrial Complex began even earlier — in 2018.

Internal CTIL Slack messages show Terp, her colleagues, and officials from DHS and Facebook all working closely together in the censorship process.

The CTIL framework and the public-private model are the seeds of what both the US and UK would put into place in 2020 and 2021, including masking censorship within cybersecurity institutions and counter-disinformation agendas; a heavy focus on stopping disfavored narratives, not just wrong facts; and pressuring social media platforms to take down information or take other actions to prevent content from going viral.

https://notthebee.com/article/lol-disney-made-microsoft-change-their-ai-image-generator-because-people-were-making-too-many-savage-fake-disney-pixar-movie-posters

Disney got Microsoft to change its AI image generator because people were making too many savage Pixar-style posters

https://x.com/shellenberger/status/1729538920487305723?s=20

https://notthebee.com/article/the-irish-government-doesnt-want-citizens-to-equate-the-recent-dublin-stabbing-with-immigration-so-they-went-ahead-and-colluded-with-social-media-companies-to-censor-speech-can-you-guess-whic

The Irish government doesn't want its citizens to connect the recent Dublin mass stabbing to immigration, despite the fact that the perp, who stabbed four people on Thursday including three children, is an Algerian immigrant who has lived in Ireland for 20 years.

So following the attack — again, an attack by an immigrant — the Irish people rioted in the streets, which seems to have frustrated the lefties in parliament who just can't stand these "far-right," "anti-immigration," "extremists" who, for some reason, don't like it when immigrants stab their children. So what did they do in order to "stop the hate?"

They got in touch with social media companies and colluded with them to censor the speech of these Irish citizens who don't quite hold the right set of ideas. Not kidding.

A little context here: Gardai is Ireland's national police force, and Coimisiun na Mean is Ireland's new media regulator. Here's Ireland "Justice" Minister Helen McEntee, the face of the nanny state:

I spoke to a detective in Pearse Street on Saturday who was actively engaged with the social media companies throughout Thursday who was actively engaged with TikTok, actively engaged with Meta, so Instagram and Facebook, who was actively engaged with Twitter or X. She said very clearly that social media companies, in particular TikTok and Meta, they were responding, they were engaging with Gardai, and they were taking down these vile posts as they came up.

X were not. X were not, they didn't engage, they did not fulfill their own community standards, and that is why we are moving to a situation where these companies do not get to self-monitor. That's why Coimisiun na Mean has been established to make sure that these companies are held responsible. Because while some were responsible others were not.

So let me reassure you Guardai were seized of this, they were engaging, they were engaging directly with the social media companies.

Openly — right out in the open at parliament — this lady is talking about censoring speech — using Facebook and TikTok to get rid of opinions the state dislikes.

What a great treat it is to know that Elon Musk's X was the only social media company to say no. The world has changed, my friends, and now, thanks to Elon, these poor politicians will have to write laws specifically aimed at censoring speech instead of simply colluding with the platforms and getting away with it Scot-free. This is revolutionary!

Man, I love new Twitter!

You will still get banned for saying "faggot" on Twitter though.

https://billricejr.substack.com/p/dhd-tries-to-scrub-its-big-brother

In a short post today, I’d encourage my readers to simply watch this 2-minute video that was produced by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

The video encourages a young girl - depicted in a cartoon - to report her “Uncle Steve” for spreading “disinformation” about Covid.

Uncle Steve had written on a social media post that the Infection Fatality Rate for Covid is “the same as the flu.”

For most healthy people under the age of 60, this is a completely true statement.

But, for the sake of argument, let’s say it’s not true - that Uncle Steve is wrong.

According to the DHS, Uncle Steve is a threat to public health and should be turned in - by his own niece … who, in this video cartoon, does dutifully turn Uncle Steve into authorities.

Right, wrong or possibly right, Uncle Steve can’t even share an opinion if it goes against what Anthony Fauci said.

As this must-read article shows, the DHS has now gone back and scrubbed all of its website posts that brag about how the bureaucracy is now performing “domestic” surveillance on Americans who are spreading disinformation. (It also scrubbed - or tried to erase - this video.)

The article depicts some of the methods and techniques numerous government agencies - and various partners - are employing to target people and organizations who do not believe the “authorized narrative.”

In the above video, we learn that the CDC is the trusted authority for Covid information and that Uncle Steve’s sources are all dangerous disinformation spreaders.

This is the same CDC that spent years repeating the Big Lie that Covid vaccines are “safe and effective” … that masks prevent virus spread … that schools had to be closed … and that Covid is a life-threatening disease even for children.

These organizations are not just captured, they’re dangerous …
I’ve recently written many words stating my belief that all important organizations are “captured.” These organizations are also incredibly dangerous.

Giant tax-payer funded organizations like the DHS are, of course, the sources who have spread volumes of dis-mis and mal-information.

It’s these organizations that brought fictional Big Brother into the real world.

When the Department of Homeland Security was created in a rush in the mass panic after 9-11, the only politician I remember predicting this agency would do great harm to the country was Congressman Ron Paul.

It’s amazing to me - but not to Paul - how rapidly this agency did become Big Brother and a sinister force in society.

I’ll finish this short article with two more Socratic-like questions:

What would happen if Americans abolished the Department of Homeland Security?

Would you suddenly feel less safe?

I wouldn’t. I’d feel much safer.

But as we all know by now, once created, no U.S. bureaucracy will ever be abolished.

Big Brother would approve.

https://rumble.com/v1hbnan-dhs-censorship-cartoon-report-uncle-steve-for-disinformation.html


original link

As far as censorship on Patrick.net, we no longer have Sikh posters writing about the immorality of Hindus.

Funny how killing off an activist in Canada and trying to off one in the USA chilled that line of communication.

I guess it's self censorship vs extreme censorship.

We are at war right now with our own government. It is why they relentlessly try to disarm us.
Recruiting video for the Army 4 PSYOP Group. Bear in mind watching this that 'enemy' now means the American people.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VA4e0NqyYMw
DHS has been "using this language of "domestic threat actor" to describe accused US citizen "misinformation" posts since its Oct. 2019 Whole-Of-Society Disinfo report."
https://twitter.com/MikeBenzCyber/status/1633228175592370179

https://www.coffeeandcovid.com/p/grim-vermin-tuesday-december-5-2023

He’s not out of the woods yet, but things were looking up a little yesterday for convicted “meme criminal” Douglass Mackey. The Post Millennial covered the story in an article headlined, “BREAKING: Federal appellate court sides with Douglass Mackey in meme case, drops prison sentence until after appeal.” (As of this morning, Corporate Media was silent as the grave, which means it was good news for the rest of us.)

In October, a federal judge sentenced Mackey to seven months in federal prison for a speech crime: in 2016, as a joke he tweeted a fake meme suggesting that Hillary supporters should vote by text. Judge Ann Donnelly didn’t get the joke. Instead she found it was an attempt to “impair the votes of black and latino Hillary supporters,” who apparently aren’t sophisticated enough to tell the difference between a joke meme and official voting instructions. And according to the judge, black and latino people are gullible, so they believe you can vote for president by text message.

In fairness, the meme was intended to look ‘official’:




Further complicating Douglass’s case were some text messages from a 4Chan message board where he’d workshopped his meme. Several still-unidentified users on that board encouraged Mackey and explicitly expressed hopes that “illegal Hillary voters” would fall for it and waste their votes.

(When these facts emerged this year, some observers wondered whether the users who encouraged Mackey to mislead voters might have been the same FBI agents who also coordinated the Gretchen Whitmer fednapping plot. But who knows.)

Back to Mackey’s sentencing. Sticking the old judicial knife in right up to the hilt, Judge Donnelly devilishly denied Mackey’s request to stay his sentence pending appeal, intentionally defeating the entire point of an appeal. In other words, by the time his appeal was decided, he’d have already served his seven-month sentence. So, take that.

Accordingly, Mackey’s lawyers rushed to appeal Judge Donnelly’s denial of the stay of his prison sentence, so that Mackey could have enough time to appeal his conviction.

Unfortunately for Mackey’s lawyers, an appeal of a stay is almost as much work as an appeal of the conviction itself. To grant a stay, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals must review enough of the case to conclude that Mackey has a “substantial likelihood of prevailing on the merits.” This is a high standard. The appellate judges must be convinced not only that Mackey’s appeal is likely to prevail, but also that it’s substantially likely to prevail.

But after reviewing the briefs from Mackey and the government, the Second Circuit granted Mackey’s stay. This was correct, in my view. The order did not comment on the merits apart from simply granting the stay and, in a compromise for the government’s position, “expedited” the appeal by shortening up the briefing deadlines.

As a litigator with decent appellate experience, I can assure you an expedited appeal is both a blessing and a curse. Under the expedited schedule, Mackey’s initial brief is now due on January 5th, meaning Mackey’s lawyers just canceled all their holiday travel plans.

Still, it could be worse. I once had a trial scheduled with jury selection set to start at 9am on January 2nd. Ugh.

https://news.rebekahbarnett.com.au/p/kevin-mckernan-loses-entire-database?publication_id=791657&post_id=139458552&isFreemail=true&r=6gdz

US-based genomics scientist Kevin McKernan says he has lost an estimated US$200, 000 worth of research data after his account on file hosting service MEGA was deleted overnight.

It appears that McKernan’s account was deleted by MEGA in response to an urgent injunction granted to New Zealand’s (NZ) Ministry of Health (MOH) to prevent the sharing of anonymised data leaked by whistleblower Barry Young.

Young, a 56 year old database administrator and former employee of the MOH, leaked data from a ‘pay per dose’ Covid vaccine database to NZ journalist Liz Gunn and US tech millionaire and Substacker Steve Kirsch.

Both Gunn and Kirsch claimed that the data showed conclusive proof that the Covid vaccines are killing people at high rates. Kirsch publicly uploaded the data on Friday 1 December, the same day the injunction was granted to the MOH.

McKernan had ‘mirrored’ Kirsch’s data upload on his MEGA account to make it easier for people to download and analyse after international confusion broke out following the sensationalised release, which brought the integrity of whistleblower’s data into question.

Having heard that an injunction had been granted to the MOH to prevent further distribution of the NZ data, McKernan says that he texted Kirsch to get clarity on Sunday 3 December, but did not hear back.

In a thread posted to X on Monday 4 December Boston time* (where McKernan is based), McKernan says he woke up to find that his entire MEGA account, including medical genome sequencing and vaccine sequencing data, with an estimated value of US$200,000, had been suddenly deleted. McKernan is one of the leading scientists involved in researching DNA contamination in the mRNA Covid vaccines.

How the fuck one doesn't have an offsite backup copy sitting somewhere in a safe and still has the gall to call himself a DBA?

https://public.substack.com/p/totalitarian-bid-to-censor-entire

PumpingRedheads says

https://public.substack.com/p/totalitarian-bid-to-censor-entire

Thge author is part of the problem"
But we do know that demands for censorship have come both directly from the US military and from heads of state of Western nations around the world. What's happening should terrify all freedom-loving people.

It is not the "US Military," it is the Biden administration that is demanding censorship. This clown does not want to admit that.

RWSGFY says

How the fuck one doesn't have an offsite backup copy sitting somewhere in a safe and still has the gall to call himself a DBA?

As a DBA, I approve of this message.

https://www.coffeeandcovid.com/p/privacy-please-wednesday-december

🔨 In viral news yesterday, mRNA contamination researcher Kevin McKernan suddenly and unexpectedly reported that his entire lab’s data, including all his ongoing projects, was deleted by the authorities — because he hosted a downloadable copy of New Zealand’s jab-death data...

Kevin was understandably upset at Steve Kirsch, who provided the data to many other experts and to the general public with helpful links for downloading the data. (Dear misinformation enforcement team: I did not download the Young Data.) In fairness to Steve, though, it was not easy to foresee the long, withered, legal arm of Te Whatu Ora (or whatever it’s called).

How I would love to see what legal instrument Kevin’s data storage provider was served with, which has caused it to commit commercial suicide. Ironically, Kevin used a storage provider named ‘MegaPrivacy.’ Its slogan is literally, “The Privacy Company.” Well, ‘the privacy company’ has a lot of ‘splaining to do, because my first question is: how did Te Whatu Ora’s thugs so rapidly discover that McKernan hosted the Young Data on his “end to end encrypted” MegaPrivacy account?

Maybe there’s a good explanation, like Kevin said it was on MegaPrivacy or something. But from the outside, it looks a lot like someone or something might just have global access to search ALL these cloud providers, whenever they want, privacy or no, encryption or no. Another question is, could any of these cloud providers possibly be funded by persons or groups with interests that differ significantly from their customers’ interests?

To drive it to a point: Are there honeypot providers only pretending to be privacy-focused? It would make sense. They attract all the folks with the most to hide. We must assume there are honeypot providers, and that there’s no way to tell for sure. To me, today’s story mainly proves that the globalists were so panicked over the New Zealand data that they accidentally revealed capabilities we didn’t know they had yet.

I’ve been beating this drum for years now: Number one, keep your critical data on your own server. Or at least keep a current local backup. Data stored on someone else’s server is not your data anymore. You’re just allowed to access the data — for now. Number two: cloud data is not private, so don’t put anything on the Internet you wouldn’t want the world to see. It doesn’t matter what the providers tell you. Just read their EULAs and you’ll find lots of exceptions for subpoenas.

A subpoena is just a piece of paper.

Also ironically, Steve and Kevin are probably victims of prior rounds of public outrage. The ‘digital privacy laws’ that are almost certainly in play in this story are on the books. The public’s moral panic over ‘digital privacy’ led us right here. The irony is we were mainly trying to keep our data private from the government. But now we have tough, new digital privacy laws that the government can wield against us.

In this case, neither Steve Kirsch nor Kevin McKernan had any idea they could possibly be subject to New Zealand’s jurisdiction (and that suggests a whole ‘nother discussion about the de facto global government). But they might have noticed a teensy little red flag, which was that Barry Young, who uploaded the data, got arrested for it. That was the time to start planning contingencies.

To be clear, I am not suggesting I am smarter than anyone else. I did not see this coming (though I’m not surprised). What can I tell you? We’re in a war. The silver linings are that, first, the globalists have exposed a significant search capacity that we didn’t know they had. Second, it’s obvious they are terrified of the Young Data.

Are there any honest politicians left in New Zealand? It’ll be up to them now.

https://www.leefang.com/p/inside-the-pro-israel-information?publication_id=1239256&post_id=139476619&isFreemail=true&r=6gdz

As the Israel-Hamas war began to heat up in late October, Courtney Carey, a Dublin-based employee of the Israeli website building company Wix, posted the Irish words “SAOIRSE DON PHALAISTIN” -- “Freedom for Palestine” -- on her LinkedIn page.

Within 24 hours of Carey’s LinkedIn post appearing, Alon Ozer, a Miami-based investor, took a screenshot of the post and shared it with a WhatsApp group of more than 300 like-minded investors, tech executives, activists, and at least one senior Israeli government official. Ozer took care to note that Carey worked for Wix.

Oded Hermoni, a tech journalist-turned-venture capitalist, piped up to assure everyone that Batsheva Moshe, Wix’s general manager for Israel and a member of the group chat, had been “on it since Sat[urday] night.”

Moshe then chimed in to assure her peers that the issue with Carey had been “taken care of since it was published.”

“I believe there will be an announcement soon re our reaction,” she added.

Wix terminated Carey the following day.

I hope that's not really the whole story. You should be able to say "Freedom for Palestine" without getting fired.

It's not that I'm on the side of Hamas, I just think free speech without penalty is extremely important.

Patrick says

I hope that's not really the whole story. You should be able to say "Freedom for Palestine" without getting fired.

The employer also has a right to hire whom they wish. Freedom of speech applies to restricting government from sanctioning you.

Seems like there is definitely a violation of rights in that. California of all places does not let employers fire you for political activities outside of work.

But that should also be a federal law, so it's part of my platform:

https://patrick.net/post/1303173/2017-02-19-patrick-s-platform

Prohibit discrimination in hiring and firing based on political activities outside of work.

Patrick says

Prohibit discrimination in hiring and firing based on political activities outside of work.

That is too broad a brush. If I am a Jewish owner of a radio station, I should be able to fire an employee who marches in a Nazi parade. If I run a Catholic Hospital, I should be able to let go an employee who joins a protest to force my hospital to perform abortions. An employer has freedom of association, which includes firing for political activity. That freedom of association also includes items like an owner of a Chinese restaurant wanting to hire only Chinese ancestor folks for a wait staff to preserve a Chinese ambience. Same with a Black barbershop who only wants Black barbers and Black customers.

https://www.coffeeandcovid.com/p/chicken-soup-saturday-december-9

💉 The most recent GOP debate was interrupted by an 8-minute blackout that was perfectly-timed to delete Vivek Ramaswamy’s entire answer to Megyn Kelly’s question about vaccine problems:




The trouble started when Megyn asked candidate Ramaswamy about the horrifying failure of the federal vaccine liability program:

“The Trump administration and private industry developed the covid vaccine in record time. The program protected the drug companies from virtually all lawsuits over vaccine injuries. The government has a program to compensate for such harm but critics say it is a black hole of bureaucracy. 12,000 claims filed, 10% decided, only 8 payouts so far, in a forum with no right to counsel, no hearings, no appeals. Mr. Trump says he’s very proud of Warp Speed. Should he be?”

First, to assuage Trump supporters, Megyn’s question was totally unfair to Trump. Trump created neither the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986 nor the 2005 PREP Act, which shield pharma from legal liability for vaccine injuries. Those laws were passed under Presidents Reagan and Bush, respectively, and both laws passed with wide bipartisan support.

The next problem was that both Megyn and Vivek immediately got in the ditch by confusing those two laws. Megyn’s question properly asked about the PREP Act and its Orwellian CICP program, deservedly called a ‘black hole of bureaucracy,’ which has only paid out eight covid vaccine claims in the last three years. Worse, the average payout on those eight claims was insultingly low, around $1,200.

It’s a punchline to a bad joke.

Vivek and Megyn both promptly confused the two programs. In fairness, it can be a little confusing. Bush’s PREP Act and its CICP program handle Emergency Use Authorized “countermeasures.” Reagan’s NCVIA and its vaccine court handle FDA-approved vaccines. PREP covers covid vaccines. (I am currently preparing a lawsuit to challenge the PREP Act.)

Much more interesting to me was how the debate moderators panicked and pulled the plug on Vivek’s answer. I’ll skip discussing how awful that was. Consider it stipulated. But consider this: the debate was live streamed. Moderators must have had prior instructions to delete this question and Vivek’s answer.

Who gave that instruction?

Next, consider the blackout in its historical context. Can you ever recall something like this happening before? A Presidential candidate’s answer censored in real time to “protect” voters from “misinformation?” About drugs?

It has never happened before.

Ladies and gentlemen, we are truly in a brave new world when our overseers control which answers to Presidential debate questions we get to hear. Orwell would probably be jumping up and down, pointing and shouting about having told us so. But they gave away the game by ham-handedly blacking the question out.

https://www.zerohedge.com/technology/rumble-hit-unprecedented-cyber-attack-after-posting-j6-security-cam-footage

Free speech video hosting platform Rumble was hit with an “unprecedented” cyber attack shortly after new security camera footage from January 6 was posted on the platform. ...

Last week it was revealed that the GOP-controlled Committee on House Administration’s Subcommittee on Oversight had created a new Rumble channel to post hours of security footage from Capitol Police taken on January 6, 2021.

“The first few videos were posted to the Rumble channel on Dec. 5. By the next day, the collection grew to 135 clips—each about 10 minutes long. The channel had nearly 700 followers on Dec. 7,” reported the Epoch Times. ...

Shortly after, Rumble was hit by a massive and seemingly organized attack that left people unable to upload or watch content.

“I can confirm that this attack has been unprecedented and has been happening since this weekend,” Rumble CEO Chris Pavlovski posted on X.

“I also suspect it is political, coming from activists and/or organizations who want to censor our creators, and related to J6 videos being posted on Rumble,” he added.

Rumble was only able to completely restore services last night.

https://reclaimthenet.org/ny-times-targets-pro-trump-memes-equates-them-with-deepfakes-and-advocates-for-regulation

It’s that time of the US election cycle again: what were formerly known as “newspapers of record” attempting to, for political reasons, promote odd ideas like regulating jokes.

It’s the New York Times this time, looking like it’s terrified that Donald Trump might be successful in his new presidential bid, and so going guns blazing after what it calls his “troll army.”

And “troll” here means – meme creators. As for the memes themselves, the NYT either pretends not to or doesn’t get the joke – namely, that they are jokes, and basically treats them as sinister tools for peddling misinformation and deepfakes.

To add insult to the paper’s injury, the memes not only support the Trump campaign, but Trump also enjoys them, and takes time to communicate with the meme creators.

The article claims that there is a large number of “sexist and racist tropes” being repeated in these memes, but singles out a video collection of some of President Biden’s many gaffes. ...

But it’s the suggested “solutions” that are the most bizarre part of the article.

One is the implication that memes should be treated as ads that run on TV and radio, meaning, regulated for “accuracy, fairness and transparency.”

And then onto the creators: the paper wouldn’t mind if they start being considered “super PACs” (i.e., independent expenditure only political activity committees), who would have to disclose any donors and provide reports about spending – and, possibly face restrictions on coordinating with campaigns.

Lol, it's flattering that they see the power of memes to expose their own lies and spin!

I get no donations, have no spending, and do not coordinate with any campaign, so good luck regulating those things.

zzyzzx says

RWSGFY says

How the fuck one doesn't have an offsite backup copy sitting somewhere in a safe and still has the gall to call himself a DBA?

As a DBA, I approve of this message.

@zzyzzx

Hosting companies don't have backup processes?

HeadSet says

That freedom of association also includes items like an owner of a Chinese restaurant wanting to hire only Chinese ancestor folks for a wait staff to preserve a Chinese ambience. Same with a Black barbershop who only wants Black barbers and Black customers.

@HeadSet,

I actually agree with you. Freedom of association was fucked in 1964 with the Civil Rights Act. If we had TRUE freedom of association in America, you'd see self segregation like crazy. Maybe the Civil Rights Act had more to do with keeping America together instead of nurturing an environment that could break America up into separate countries.

GNL says

Hosting companies don't have backup processes?

Only if you trust the hosting company, which you shouldn't.