Trump Insurrection Selfies: Sedition Self-Incrimination

The seditious MAGA insurgents who broke into the U.S. Capitol at the bidding of Donald Trump and killed a police officer are being sought by law enforcement. Photos of the red-hatted terrorists have been posted by the FBI and DC Metropolitan Police, and the public is being asked to identify them. The FBI has even posted wanted photos at bus shelters in the DC metro area.

While a few brave press photographers provided some serious documentation of the domestic terrorists, many more pix were taken and posted by the Trump supporters themselves, bragging on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, DLive, and other social media platforms about their illegal occupation of the Capitol in answer to the president’s call.

The FBI and DC police aren’t the only ones preserving and scrutinizing the Capitol mob social selfies. Activists around the world, digital sleuths, have archived the MAGA-brag trophy pix before they could be taken down, and have been scrutinizing them since last Wednesday. One of the bigger finds so far was retired Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Larry Rendall Brock, Jr., identified by John Scott-Railton at The Citizen Lab and outed by The New Yorker. 

Insurrectionists have scattered, but arrests on Federal and District charges are mounting. Before Instagramming the boys back home, those White Supremicist Christian warriors should have recalled Proverbs 16:18, “‘Hold my beer’ goeth before a fall,” and suchlike.

More:

“Thanks For the Evidence, You Seditious Dweebs,” Whitney Kimball and Tom McKay, Gizmodo

“The Pro-Trump Mob Was Doing It For The ’Gram,” Elamin Abdelmahmoud, BuzzFeed News

“The Instagram Insurrection,” Brian Kahn, Gizmodo

“More Capitol rioters in viral posts arrested, senator urges social media providers to keep data,” Rich McKay, Reuters

“The Capitol rioters put themselves all over social media. Now they’re getting arrested.” Sara Morrison, Vox

“Local Police Departments Investigate Whether Their Officers Took Part in Capitol Riot,” Andrea Noble, Route Fifty

“Off-duty police, firefighters under investigation in connection with U.S. Capitol riot,” Maria Caspan, Reuters

“At least 25 domestic terrorism cases opened as result of assault on Capitol: lawmaker,” Andrea Shalal and David Shepardson, Reuters

Updates:

“Anne Arundel police officer suspended while department investigates possible involvement in Capitol insurrection,” Lilly Price, Capital Gazette

“US Capitol Building Riot: Justice Dept. Pursues at Least 150 Suspects,” Katie Benner and Adam Goldman, New York Times

“Who were they? Records reveal Trump fans who stormed Capitol,” Michael Biesecker,
Michael Kunzelman, Gillian Flaccus, and Jim Mustian, Associated Press

“Archivists Are Mining Parler Metadata to Pinpoint Crimes at the Capitol,” Jason Koebler and Joseph Cox, Motherboard

“MAGA Civil War shirts, a Camp Auschwitz hoodie, and other extremist merchandise was on full display at the Capitol riot,” Hilary George-Parkin, Vox

“‘Trump said I could’: One possible legal defense for accused rioters,” Teri Kanefield and Mark Reichel, Washington Post

“Capitol Riot Suspect Arrested in DC Airport After Bizarre Series of Events,” Andrew Beaujon, Washingtonian

“This Site Published Every Face From Parler’s Capitol Riot Videos,” Wired

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Trump’s Christmas Message to the Troops: F*ck You.

High School Cadet Capt. Trump. Thank you for your service.

Before leaving for holiday R&R at Mar-a-Lago, bone spur survivor and U.S. Commander-in-Chief Donald Trump vetoed the Defense Bill because it didn’t defend him from being called out on Twitter. The bill would have provided pay raises to U.S. Armed Forces members. Mr. Trump also objected to removing names of previous violators of constitutional oaths from military installations, apparently fearing it would keep the Pentagon from naming Space Force facilities after himself.

More:

“Trump Vetoes Annual Defense Policy Bill, Including Military Pay Raise,” Kevin Freking, AP via Military.com

“Trump Vetoes Defense Bill, Defends Confederate Bases Over Troops’ Pay,” Arya Hodjat, Daily Beast

“Trump vetoes $741 billion defense bill over his completely unrelated spat with social-media companies and against the wishes of top Republicans,” John Haltiwanger, Business Insider

“Trump vetoes $740B defense bill, citing ‘failure to terminate’ Section 230,” Kate Cox, Ars Technica

“Trump vetoes $740bn US military bill over clause to rename bases honoring Confederates,” Griffin Connolly, The Independent

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Top image: Cadet Capt. Trump’s high school picture. Download a copy here.

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Firm Behind Turning Point’s Teen Trolls Booted From Facebook

Right-wing youth indoctrination outfit Turning Point USA (known to us as Trump-Jugend) has been paying teenagers sub-minimum wages to fill social media platforms with attacks on Democratic candidates and disinformation about coronavirus. Twitter and Facebook noticed and shut down the adolescents’ accounts last month. Yesterday, Facebook removed more “inauthentic accounts”and banned Rally Forge, the political marketing firm that helped Turning Point’s Charlie Kirk turn out the teen trolls. Rally Forge is owned by Arizona Republican official Jake Hoffman, who is also behind a phantom campaign called “Navajos for Trump.”

More:

“Facebook bans marketing firm running ‘troll farm’ for pro-Trump youth group,” Isaac Stanley-Becker, Washington Post

“Facebook bans firm behind Turning Point’s election troll farm,” Steven Overly, Politico

“Facebook removes hundreds of fake profiles tied to pro-Trump group,” Kari Paul, The Guardian

“Facebook bans troll accounts linked to conservative group Turning Point USA,” Adi Robertson, The Verge

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Turning Point USA: Teen Trolls for Hire

Astoundingly, “on-shoring,” one of Donald Trump’s political promises, is happening. His 2020 campaign’s troll farms have moved from Russia to Arizona. A branch of right-wing youth indoctrination outfit Turning Point USA (known to us as Trump-Jugend) has been paying teenagers sub-minimum wages to fill social media platforms with attacks on Democratic candidates and disinformation about coronavirus. Twitter and Facebook finally noticed and shut down the teen accounts this week.

Turning Point Action, an arm of the nominally-nonprofit Turning Point USA, contracted right-wing social media company Rally Forge (get it?) to coordinate the teen trolls’ spamming. Funding may have flowed through shadow political action groups Turning Point PAC and/or RallyPAC. Turning Point USA, Turning Point Action, and Students for Trump are all headed by Charlie Kirk. Rally Forge and RallyPAC are both run by Jake Hoffman. Turning Point Action and Rally Forge are also behind a phantom campaign called “Navajos for Trump.”

More:

“Pro-Trump youth group enlists teens in secretive campaign likened to a ‘troll farm,’ prompting rebuke by Facebook and Twitter,” Isaac Stanley-Becker, Washington Post

Related:

“Turning Point USA co-founder dies of coronavirus-related complications,” Daniel Lippman and Tina Nguyen, Politico

“Pro-Trump super PAC backed solely by bank executive used donations to fund Facebook conspiracy meme campaign,” Brian Schwartz, CNBC

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Cambridge Analytica Got Data on 87 Million Facebook Users

Remember learning that Trump campaign data-mining firm Cambridge Analytica grabbed personal information from 50 million Facebook users? Fake News! it was 87 million.

But that’s nothing. Facebook now admits it let all kinds of skeevy cyber customers (it calls them “malicious actors”) scrape personal data from 2 billion people. Yes, that’s most Facebook users. Oops.

Looks like Mark Zuckerberg will have some ‘splainin’ to do when he testifies before Congress next Tuesday. Fun Fact: Three of his congressional questioners own FB stock.

Shut-the-Barn-Door-After Department: There are Plans to Restrict Data Access on Facebook.

More:

“Mark Zuckerberg knows he screwed up,” Kurt Wagner, ReCode

“Facebook says it should have audited Cambridge Analytica,” Associated Press

“Facebook’s dizzying spin on ‘the Cambridge Analytica thing,’” Callum Borchers, Washington Post

“Facebook suspends Canadian firm linked to Cambridge Analytica,” Kia Kokalitcheva, David McCabe, Axios

“As Facebook confronts data misuse, foreign governments might force real change,” Nick Noack, Washington Post

Related:

“This is how Zuckerberg’s Facebook will likely get regulated,” Chase Purdy, Quartz

“It’s about to get harder to trick people with political ads on Facebook,” Hanna Kozlowska, Quartz

“Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg Says Data-Sharing Tool Complied With FTC,” Sarah Frier, Bloomberg

“AP sources: EPA chief spent millions on security and travel,” Michael Biesecker, Associated Press

“Private Messages Aren’t Exactly Private at Facebook,” Shira Ovide, Bloomberg Gadfly

“Facebook retracted Zuckerberg’s messages from recipients’ inboxes,” Josh Constine, Techcrunch

“Facebook may need group therapy to fix its engineering culture,” Janet Guyon, Quartz

“Can We Be Saved From Facebook?” Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone

“Don’t Fix Facebook. Replace It.” Tim Wu, New York Times

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Cambridge Analytica & the Trump Campaign

During 2016 the Trump presidential campaign paid $5.9 million to data firm Cambridge Analytica, which harvested information from 50 million Facebook users in order to develop psychographic data it used to micro-target advertising to individual voters. Unless it didn’t.

Cambridge Analytica illegally mined FB user data for the Trump campaign. Unless Cambridge Analytica was merely using Facebook the way it was designed to be used, and it’s really Facebook that’s at fault.

Trump Campaign factotum Jared Kushner brought in Cambridge Analytica, funded by the U.S. conservative Mercer family, with links to a Chinese firm through U.S. mercenary Erik Prince, and Steve Bannon was a board member. SCL Group, the parent company of Cambridge Analytica, is British. At the same time, the Make America Number 1 Super PAC paid Cambridge Analytica $5.7 million to develop negative ads targeting Hilary Clinton. The PAC-Trump campaign coordination and foreign involvement are violations of federal election law. Maybe.

In short, Cambridge Analytica was the secret weapon that helped get the 70,000 Trump votes in key states that swayed the 2016 presidential election. Or it wasn’t.

Clear?

Trump Campaign Info Hub: Macedonia

“Over the past year, the Macedonian town of Veles (population 45,000) has experienced a digital gold rush as locals launched at least 140 US politics websites. These sites have American-sounding domain names such as WorldPoliticus.com, TrumpVision365.com, USConservativeToday.com, DonaldTrumpNews.co, and USADailyPolitics.com. They almost all publish aggressively pro-Trump content aimed at conservatives and Trump supporters in the US.

The young Macedonians who run these sites say they don’t care about Donald Trump. They are responding to straightforward economic incentives: As Facebook regularly reveals in earnings reports, a US Facebook user is worth about four times a user outside the US. The fraction-of-a-penny-per-click of US display advertising — a declining market for American publishers — goes a long way in Veles. Several teens and young men who run these sites told BuzzFeed News that they learned the best way to generate traffic is to get their politics stories to spread on Facebook — and the best way to generate shares on Facebook is to publish sensationalist and often false content that caters to Trump supporters.”

— “How Teens In The Balkans Are Duping Trump Supporters With Fake News,” Craig Silverman and Lawrence Alexander, BuzzFeed

More:

“How Facebook powers money machines for obscure political ‘news’ sites,” Dan Tynan, The Guardian

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Facebook is Like a Disease, But Recovery is Near

“A new study of Facebook has predicted that the social network’s rapid growth will prove unsustainable and that the site will lose 80 per cent of its users between 2015 and 2017.

A group of Princeton researchers has compared Facebook to a highly infectious disease, claiming that after it reaches a certain critical mass of ‘infected’ users, these individuals will ‘recover’ and quit the site.”

— “Facebook is an ‘infectious disease’ and will lose 80% of users by 2017, according to researchers,” James Vincent, The Independent

If you’s like to see how Princeton’s engineers apply an epidemiological model to social media, you can read study here:

“Epidemiological modeling of online social network dynamics,” John Cannarella and Joshua A. Spechler, arXiv

Facebook Refuseniks

Facebook claims 200 million active users in the United States, about two-thirds of the population. “But the company is running into a roadblock,” writes Jenna Wortham. “Some people, even on the younger end of the age spectrum, just refuse to participate, including people who have given it a try.”

“The number of Americans who visited Facebook grew 10 percent in the year that ended in October — down from 56 percent growth over the previous year, according to comScore, which tracks Internet traffic.”

“One of Facebook’s main selling points is that it builds closer ties among friends and colleagues. But some who steer clear of the site say it can have the opposite effect of making them feel more, not less, alienated.”

Berlusconi on Facebook

Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi is in the news again, but for his economic policies, not his romantic escapades. The Italian economy, third largest in Europe, is starting to tank. The P.M.’s allies are jumping ship, urging him to quit. “That Silvio Berlusconi is about to resign is clear. It is a question of hours, some say of minutes,” wrote one long-time friend. The Prime Minister issued a denial:  “Le voci di mie dimissioni sono destituite di fondamento” (“The rumors of my resignation are groundless “).

Silvio Berlusconi, third richest man in Italy, controls the country’s commercial television stations and newspapers and magazines. As PM, he controls RAI, the Italian government broadcasting network. So how did Mr. Berlusconi make his defiant announcement?

On Facebook.

Related:

“Quick Primer On Chances Of Italy Destroying The World Economy,” Seeking Alpha

“Politicans and Business Close Ranks Against Berlusconi,” Fiona Ehlers, Spiegel Online

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Image (“Berlusconi on Facebook, after François Gabriel Lepaulle”) by Mike Licht. Download a copy here. Creative Commons license; credit Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com

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