Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, GOP QAnon Drama Queen and Miss Misinformation 2021, has finally been booted from Twitter for her anti-vax, pro-virus tweets. Sadly, her official congressional Twitter account is still active, and she has lots of time to tweet, having been bounced off all her House committees.
More:
“Twitter permanently suspends Greene’s account over COVID-19 misinformation,” Caroline Vakil, The Hill
“Twitter permanently suspends Marjorie Taylor Greene’s personal account,” Doha Madani, NBC News
“Twitter bans Marjorie Taylor Greene’s personal account over COVID misinformation,” Joe Hernandez, NPR News
“Twitter Permanently Mutes Marjorie Taylor Greene Account for Spreading COVID Misinformation,” Jordan Hoffman, Vanity Fair
Updates:
“McCarthy Campaigns For Speaker By Denouncing Twitter After It Suspends Marjorie Taylor Greene,” Summer Concepcion, TalkingPointsMemo
GOP leader criticizes Twitter over Greene decision without naming her,” Rebecca Klar, The Hill
“Rand Paul Vows to Fill Misinformation Void Caused by Twitter’s Ban of Marjorie Taylor Greene,” Andy Borowitz, The New Yorker
“Facebook temporarily suspends U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s account,” Daniel Uria, UPI
“Conservatives clash: Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene, Dan Crenshaw trade social media insults,” Chelsey Cox, USA Today
“Trump’s Favorite Pastor Is ‘Tired’ of Marjorie Taylor Greene,” Zachary Petrizzo, Daily Beast
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After it became clear that Donald Trump had used Twitter to organize and incite the murderous mob attack on the U.S. Capitol, Twitter finally suspended his disinformation-spewing account permanently.
Twitter also disabled 70,000 QAnon-linked accounts used to propagate the conspiracy theories behind the MAGA Capitol insurrection. People those conspirators followed were unhappy.
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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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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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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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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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