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Category: Social media

Stunning success of No Kings protests gives Trump a bout of AI diarrhea

Stunning success of No Kings protests gives Trump a bout of AI diarrhea

Julianne McShane writes: Saturday’s “No Kings” protests were, as my colleagues chronicled, about as wholesome as you could imagine. There were inflatable animals. There were American flags galore. Even the New York Police Department admitted that the 100,000 protesters were peaceful and that cops made no arrests; police in Washington, DC and Austin, Texas said the same. But that hasn’t stopped top Republicans from thoroughly melting down over its success. Case in point: On his Truth Social platform on Saturday…

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Wokeness is alive and well — on the right

Wokeness is alive and well — on the right

  Language policing. Cancel culture. Victimhood contests and cultural grievances. Despite attacking the left for partaking in such practices, there’s an emerging set of individuals on the right who have became exactly what they’ve criticized. Meet the woke right.

Facebook collaborates with Trump regime by taking down ICE-sightings group in Chicago

Facebook collaborates with Trump regime by taking down ICE-sightings group in Chicago

Chicago Sun-Times reports: At the request of the U.S. Department of Justice, a Facebook group used by nearly 80,000 people to report sightings of federal immigration agents in the Chicago area has been taken down by the social media giant Meta, Facebook’s parent company. The group, called ICE Sighting-Chicagoland, has been increasingly used over the last five weeks of “Operation Midway Blitz,” President Donald Trump’s intense deportation campaign, to warn neighbors that federal agents are near schools, grocery stores and…

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White House officials are increasingly concerned about Laura Loomer’s influence

White House officials are increasingly concerned about Laura Loomer’s influence

The Wall Street Journal reports: President Trump confidante Laura Loomer has successfully campaigned for the ouster of more than a dozen national security officials and others she has accused of secretly working against the president’s “Make America Great Again” agenda. Now she is training her considerable firepower inside the MAGA tent. In recent weeks, the right-wing conspiracy theorist has: Gone after former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, dubbing him “Tucker Qatarlson” who is being “bought off by the Muslim Brotherhood,”…

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Can the Trump regime ban apps that track ICE agents?

Can the Trump regime ban apps that track ICE agents?

BBC News reports: The US government and law enforcement agencies have hit out at developers and users of apps which track Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), arguing they threaten the lives of agents. The FBI says the man who targeted an ICE facility in Dallas – killing two detainees – had used these types of apps to track the movements of agents and their vehicles. A tracking app downloaded more than a million times that shows the movements of immigration…

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AI-generated social media has arrived ‘where seeing is not believing’

AI-generated social media has arrived ‘where seeing is not believing’

NPR reports: A fascist SpongeBob SquarePants, a dog driving a car and Jesus playing Minecraft – these are just a few of the things you can see as you flip through OpenAI’s new app populated exclusively with short-form videos generated using artificial intelligence. And if you can’t find what you’re looking for, don’t worry: you can make it with ease using a small text-based prompt window in the app. The result is a highly addictive stream of sometimes funny and…

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Israel is paying influencers $7,000 per social media post

Israel is paying influencers $7,000 per social media post

Responsible Statecraft reports: In a meeting dedicated to harnessing pro-Israel media energy on Friday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu alluded to a cohort of Israel’s influencers. “We have to fight back. How do we fight back? Our influencers. I think you should also talk to them if you have a chance, to that community, they are very important.” Being paid by Israel to post on social media is also very lucrative. According to previously unreported recent documents, these influencers are…

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Trump’s TikTok deal looks like crony capitalism

Trump’s TikTok deal looks like crony capitalism

John Cassidy writes: Donald Trump is a compulsive issuer of executive orders: since January, there have been more than two hundred of them. Some are glorified press releases; others are more significant. “Saving TikTok While Protecting National Security” falls decidedly into the second category. Signed last week, on the same day that the Department of Justice indicted James Comey, it is designed to facilitate the transfer of a social-media platform with a hundred and seventy million American users to a…

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The rise of the ‘edgelord’ shooter

The rise of the ‘edgelord’ shooter

Ryan Broderick writes: Most American men under 30 at this point have had a 4chan phase — or at least spent time on an equivalent toxic internet community. Even if the ICE shooter did decide to dedicate himself to antifascism at the last minute — like Robinson may have done — he’s still going to talk like a 4channer and filter those ideas through the prism of ironic edgy internet speak. As I’ve written before, this is the water young…

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The rapid MAGA media takeover

The rapid MAGA media takeover

David Karpf writes: American mass media has been transformed in these early months of President Donald Trump’s second administration. We’re about 35 weeks into a term that will last for 173 more, and in that time, we have seen a tech titan gut a once-great newspaper in an apparent act of capitulation to the commander in chief, government accounts gleefully spreading hateful memes on X (the far-right platform owned by a billionaire tech oligarch), a defamation lawsuit filed by Trump…

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How gaming platforms have become hidden incubators for extremism

How gaming platforms have become hidden incubators for extremism

Axios reports: While policymakers and headlines have traditionally zeroed in on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, TikTok and X, young people are increasingly gathering on gaming platforms — and having conversations that are typically anonymous and largely invisible to the outside world. Why it matters: Spaces like Discord, Roblox and Steam — built for gamers to connect — have evolved into the social discourse hubs where authentic interactions happen, as mainstream apps chase virality instead. Now, these gaming platforms are drawing new scrutiny…

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ICE just spent millions on surveillance technology that was banned by Facebook

ICE just spent millions on surveillance technology that was banned by Facebook

Forbes reports: In 2021, Meta banned a surveillance company called Cobwebs from gathering intelligence across all its platforms. Its security staff had discovered Cobwebs, founded by former members of Israel’s elite cyber intel agencies, was using hundreds of accounts to snoop on Facebook and WhatsApp users, many of them activists, opposition politicians and government officials in Hong Kong and Mexico. Since then, ICE has spent over $5 million on the company’s tools, with one $2 million purchase made this week…

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FBI profiler explains why some Groypers have trans partners

FBI profiler explains why some Groypers have trans partners

A self-described FBI profiler (and I see no reason to doubt that that is indeed her profession) who provides commentary on TikTok as “FriendlyHoneyBadger” and YouTube as “Cult College,” sheds light on why some far-right Groypers (led by Nick Fuentes) choose or groom trans partners, countering the assumption that if Tyler Robinson (Charlie Kirk’s alleged killer) had a trans partner then he must be a leftist.    

Making sense of our dark new era of extremely online political violence

Making sense of our dark new era of extremely online political violence

Ryan Broderick & Adam Bumas write: In 2017, [Tyler] Robinson [Charlie Kirk’s alleged killer] appears to have dressed up in a costume of President Donald Trump, with the Trump’s face painted green. A possible reference to the Pepe the Frog edit of Trump that the president first shared in 2015. And in 2018, Robinson appears to have dressed up as a “squatting slav” Pepe meme. As easy as it is to point to these costumes as proof that Robinson was…

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Right-wing activists are targeting people for allegedly celebrating Charlie Kirk’s murder

Right-wing activists are targeting people for allegedly celebrating Charlie Kirk’s murder

Wired reports: Far-right influencers and violent extremists are posting identifying details about people they view as celebrating or glorifying the murder of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk. The campaign has been swift and widespread and has already led to at least one person losing their job and others receiving death threats. The people posting the identifying information include Chaya Raichik, who runs the hugely influential, hate-filled LibsofTikTok account on X, Trump-whisperer Laura Loomer, and former Proud Boy leader Enrique Tarrio. A…

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