Day After Senator Lindsey Graham Is Credibly Accused Of Trying To Undermine The Election, He Hosts Hearing Attacking Social Media For Undermining Election
from the this-is-all-so-dumb dept
The timing on this is quite incredible. On Monday, Georgia's (Republican) Secretary of State, Brad Raffensperger, spoke out, saying that Senator Lindsey Graham had called him and implied that Raffensperger should look to throw out ballots that were legally cast in the state. On Tuesday morning, in trying to defend his efforts to undermine the election, Graham tried to shake off his calls with Raffensperger as no big deal, saying that he also spoke to Arizona and Nevada election officials. This does not make things better. Indeed, it actually seems to make things worse (and that's even after Arizona's Secretary of State, Katie Hobbs, claimed that Graham's claims were "false" and she never spoke to him.
All of this certainly seems like cause for concern about election interference and tampering. Indeed, it's the kind of thing a good government would at least investigate. And, in a stroke of good timing, the Senate Judiciary Committee was all set up on Wednesday to host a hearing about the 2020 Election and "suppression." Except... this hearing was organized and chaired by the very same Senator Lindsey Graham, and was yet another dog and pony show of internet CEOs having to defend specific content moderation choices.
Now a sane person who loosely follows the news might be saying "wait, didn't we just do that last month?" And you'd be right. Just a few weeks ago, there was an almost identical hearing. Both hearings had Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey (the earlier hearing also had Google's Sundar Pichai). Both hearings featured a bunch of grandstanding and often clueless Senators demanding to know specific answers to why the websites did or did not moderate specific pieces of content.
But this time it was the Senate Judiciary Committee, as compared to the Senate Commerce Committee last time. There were a few overlapping guests -- including Senators Ted Cruz, Mike Lee, and Marsha Blackburn. This one also included Senator Josh Hawley who grandstands with the best of them over this issue. Cruz and Lee basically did a warmed over, half-baked rehash of their performances from a few weeks ago. Hawley's performance was particularly stupid. He claimed to have heard from a "whistleblower" inside Facebook and posted two grainy screenshots of internal Facebook tools. One was its "Tasks" tool, which is a general company-wide task manager tool, which Hawley used to imply that Facebook, Twitter and Google are some how colluding to figure out which users, hashtags, and content they're going to suppress.
This is not how any of this works. Hawley demanded that Zuckerberg turn over every mention of Google or Twitter in their Tasks tool, and Zuck quite reasonably pointed out that he couldn't commit to that without knowing what sort of sensitive information might be involved. This is basically the equivalent of Hawley asking for every email that mentions Twitter or Google. It's an insane and intrusive request, though he threatened to subpoena the company if Zuckerberg wouldn't comply. Hawley then demanded to know if any Facebook employees ever communicate with Twitter or Google.
Zuckerberg, again, quite reasonably, pointed out that he's sure that people who work in trust and safety at some point or another know of people in similar roles at other companies and he's sure at some point or another some of them communicate with each other, but that's quite different than plotting over what content to block as Hawley kept insisting. Hawley then trotted out another screenshot of some other internal tool that Zuckerberg says he didn't recognize and thus couldn't answer any questions about -- which Hawley again pretended to be some damning evasiveness from the CEO. What it actually suggested is that this is not a very important tool, and Hawley is clearly overstating what it's used for.
Oh, and Hawley, ridiculously, insisted on calling the trust and safety teams at these companies "censorship teams," and implying that they deliberately try to silence ideological content (they do not). Of course, what's truly crazy is that many of the half-dozen or so different Section 230 reform bills that Hawley has introduced in the Senate would actually require more content takedowns than we have today. But you can't be a demagoguing populist without demagoguing while the cameras are on, and Hawley played his part.
If you'd like to read my play-by-play response to the entire hearing as it happened, I have a very long Twitter thread:
Here I am, awake in the early morning to watch @LindseyGrahamSC hold a hearing on "suppression and the 2020 election" a day after it was revealed that *he* was demanding Georgia's Secretary of State throw out *legal* votes. The hearing's not about Graham, though, but "big tech." pic.twitter.com/OgLfUvXVrO
— Mike Masnick (@mmasnick) November 17, 2020
Or if you're truly a glutton for punishment, you can watch the entire 4 hours and 43 minutes of the hearing but I do not recommend that for your own sanity:
Like other hearings involving the internet, this hearing was big on rhetoric, ignorance on the part of the senators and no clear urgent need for such a hearing right now. For the most part, you had Republican senators mad about choices to moderate certain content (or to make decisions too quickly that later turned out to be mistaken), while Democratic senators were mad about choices not to moderate other content (or to make decisions too slowly). In other words, they see this debate as a sort of tug o' war, with the companies as the rope, and their main hope is to influence content moderation to work the way they want it to work, if they could wave a magic wand and just enable the content that they and their supporters want.
We should see this entire thing as an affront to the 1st Amendment. Demanding changes (in either direction) to the content moderation practices of private websites is a massive 1st Amendment issue. Imagine if Democratic senators called in Fox News execs to complain about story choices? Or Republicans did the same with the NY Times. 1st Amendment and free press people would be reasonably up in arms over this gross abuse of power over something that the Constitution deliberately and clearly says Congress has no authority over.
So why do we let them do this to social media companies?
Much of the hearing was little more than moral panic claim after moral panic claim, highlighting the nature and problems of society itself -- and then pinning the blame on social media. It's the same moral panic we've seen play out over and over again for centuries. Some new medium comes about, and people use it. Some people use it for things that upset other people, and rather than look at the underlying causes, it's easier to blame the messenger.
It's as disappointing as it is predictable.
And chances are it's only going to continue. Towards the end of the hearing Senator Thom Tillis (and Senator Chris Coons) suggested that both Zuckerberg and Dorsey should commit to returning again next month. And Senator Richard Blumenthal even laughed mirthfully in closing out the hearing by saying he fully expected there to be many, many more hearings with these execs.
It's all for show. The senators want to be seen to be doing something and picking on these platforms is a welcome distraction from actual problems in society -- including a president who refuses to concede in the election he lost, the quarter of a million (and climbing) dead people from a botched COVID response (and the lack of any real effort to deal with COVID as it sweeps across the country again), and so many other things. Rather than facing actual problems facing society, Senator Lindsey Graham and his colleagues have decided that it's best to play "look! squirrel!" and insist that the biggest problem of today is that Twitter and Facebook want to fact check the president when he spews nonsense and dangerous conspiracy theories.
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Filed Under: congress, content moderation, jack dorsey, josh hawley, lindsey graham, mark zuckerberg, marsha blackburn, section 230, senate judiciary committee, ted cruz
Companies: facebook, twitter
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Ah yes, the 'I know you are but what am I?' gambit
Makes perfect sense really, they could really use something to distract their cult from the fact that the Dear Leader not only lost by millions again but the spread of votes was such that he got trounced heavily in the EC(which is the only thing that actually matters in presidential elections), and that for all their claims of 'election fraud!' they've either come up with positively nothing or it turns out that they were the ones attempting to do that.
With a backdrop of failure both big and small and a need to stoke the conspiracy laden persecution complex of the cult it makes perfect sense that they'd try to go on the offense in a setting where the other side can't just laugh them out and tell them to come back when they've got something real to bring to the table.
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Funny thing: Trumpians generally tend to hate science, but they have perfected DARVO to the point where their deployment of that strategy feels scientifically calculated.
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https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/17/us/politics/michigan-certify-election-results.html
The party that just tried to blackmail the state of Michigan into letting them effectively toss out the votes for the ENTIRE CITY OF DETROIT has surrendered any right to lecture anyone on election interference.
They backed down, but the fact they even considered it is one of many utterly despicable things they've tried in the past week.
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I really fail to see why Zuk and Dorsey even play along. Ok, this is the senate and the players are supposed to be respected, but if they insist on acting like spoilt children they ought to be told as much.
A polite but firm "we run private businesses and you are trampling over the 1st amendment - that, may you be reminded, you swore to uphold" would be great to see. A "with respect you are inventing crap and spouting bullshit" would be even better.
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Re:
With Zuck it's entirely a performance, Facebook is openly slanted towards right wing bullsh*t with a republican operative in management kneecapping any attempt to change course and harming left leaning news outlets. If he was excused from manufactured right wing outrage, people would ask why.
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Re:
"I really fail to see why Zuk and Dorsey even play along"
It seems fairly obvious that Zuckerberg agrees with the politics, has done things to amplify their politics on the back end, and if nothing else likes the concessions to billionaires.
With Dorsey, it seems a little more complicated but it's undeniable that Trump has been a major traffic booster to Twitter over the years and he's not willing to completely destroy that revenue stream until Trump is out on his ass.
"A polite but firm "we run private businesses and you are trampling over the 1st amendment - that, may you be reminded, you swore to uphold" would be great to see."
Yes, but their bank accounts tell them to ignore such trifles.
"A "with respect you are inventing crap and spouting bullshit" would be even better."
To be fair, Twitter has been labelling every Trump tweet with that recently, they have just stopped short of actually banning him like they would with any similar account.
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Re:
Another facet of that is, can you imagine these guys as regularly calling in the executives of say, energy or chemical corporations for stuff they do?
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Re: Re:
or the CEOs of AT&T, Comcast, or Disney?
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Motherfucker, if the Democrats had tampered with the election you'd be out of a job.
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'If we cheated why are you still here?'
That is one of the more entertaining refutation to the claims of election fraud to be sure, in that somehow only the presidential part of the election is to be considered fraudulent despite both presidential and senate/house options being on the same ballot.
By some magic means or limitations the same party that is accused of orchestrating a flawless theft of an election, to the point that the republican party has yet to present any credible evidence of it, either couldn't be bothered or were incapable of giving the boot to numerous republicans in the house and senate.
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Re: 'If we cheated why are you still here?'
Much like the claims of fraud in 2016 (an election Trump won and still insisted was fraudulent) -- the Democrats executed a voter fraud scheme so massive that roughly 1 out of every 100 people in America was involved, so secret that not a single one of those people came forward to reveal the truth, and so incompetent that nobody at any stage of the plan suggested maybe having some of them vote in some swing states or something.
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Re: 'If we cheated why are you still here?'
Frankly, my guess is that there has been massive Republican-leaning fraud by tampering with voting machines without paper trail, by our Russian friends and others. This does not work for mail-in ballots. And while the fraud was sufficient for the House and Senate wins, it wasn't enough to carry Trump over the finishing line. Because the polls weren't all that wrong.
Sounds a whole lot more plausible than what Trump is spinning, doesn't it? Maybe that's why he is spinning this yarn, so that the people say "the election wasn't rigged, get over it".
One less criminal lawsuit for him to fear while preparing for 2024.
Oh, and by the way: I also suspect that the Trump campaign's hush money payments to Stormy Daniels were not about services rendered to Trump but to, say, people like Lindsey Graham. Which are now in Trump's pocket.
Because nobody bothers looking further after Trump denies having parties with hookers. "Who else could it have been?" just isn't a question seriously occupying anybody.
See how easy it is to come up with more plausible conspiracy theories than the Republicans?
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Re: Re: 'If we cheated why are you still here?'
"Frankly, my guess is that there has been massive Republican-leaning fraud by tampering with voting machines without paper trail, by our Russian friends and others."
Or, as is extraordinarily common with Republicans when all the evidence is out - "every accusation is a confession". Perhaps the reason they are so loudly decrying this process is that they know they cheated.
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Re: Re: 'If we cheated why are you still here?'
"Frankly, my guess is that there has been massive Republican-leaning fraud by tampering with voting machines without paper trail, by our Russian friends and others."
Or, in the 2016 elections, that Trump's "self-funded" campaign was actually paid for by Putin...That's as good a baseless conspiracy as any, because it's not as if there's evidence the russian state bank guaranteed hundreds of millions of dollars worth of loan by Trump right before he seriously went into politics.
All I can say is, looking at these four years, that Putin certainly got his money's worth and then some.
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Re: 'If we cheated why are you still here?'
The best explanation for that I've heard is "that would have been too obvious". It's not a good explanation, because pretty much everyone, including Republicans, expected the Democrats to increase their House lead and possibly flip the Senate, so that would not have obviously looked like a fraudulent result. But it's the only one they have.
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Re: Re: 'If we cheated why are you still here?'
That's coming from the same people who are claiming that it's 'obvious' that the democrats cheated in the presidential election, right?
'It would be too obvious that we cheated in the election if we flipped house and senate seats, so we'll 'only' cheat to win the presidency and no-one will suspect a thing' doesn't really hold up to any scrutiny, though I suppose you can't expect much from people jumping at conspiracy theories in a desperate attempt to avoid facing that their Dear Leader lost.
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Re:
That's what's so funny about all this - if the Democrats cheated to win, why would they cheat in such a way that didn't hand them complete control of both houses, or at least kick people like McConnell to the curb, rather than keep people in office who are going to interfere with everything they do for the next 4 years? It's like fixing the scratchcard lottery but only giving yourself the cards that give you your stake back, the risk vs reward makes no sense.
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"Imagine if Democratic senators called in Fox News execs to complain about story choices? Or Republicans did the same with the NY Times. 1st Amendment and free press people would be reasonably up in arms over this gross abuse of power over something that the Constitution deliberately and clearly says Congress has no authority over.
So why do we let them do this to social media companies? "
Because anyone can post on social media, just like anyone can stand on a corner of the street and yell "the end is nigh". Not everyone can appear on Fox News (or any news channel, for that matter) or write for NY Times.
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See, that sounds like a good argument for protecting social media companies from government overreach into moderation decisions.
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It frustrates me to no end that these people:
A. Scapegoat 230 to hide the fact they have a problem with free speech.
B. Are using said section to try and distract from their utter failure to provide their constituents ANY sort of relief aid or help of any kind.
It's amazing that in a time where there's a pandemic, record unemployment, high body counts due to said pandemic, a housing crisis just to name a few, they're focused on carving up Section 230.
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Re:
"It's amazing that in a time where there's a pandemic, record unemployment, high body counts due to said pandemic, a housing crisis just to name a few, they're focused on carving up Section 230."
Not really. Remember the creed of the libertarian randists as given voice by the president right in the front of Arlington; "I don't get it. What was in it for them?"
If all the bad things happen to suckers and losers who, had they a clue, would have been wealthy enough not to give a rat's ass about lesser peons, then that's a non-issue to republican office-holders.
And the peons should just keep their traps shut because mouthing off at their superior nobility is just damn rude.
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To Trumpians, anything that calls into question the validity of anything Dear Leader says is the biggest problem of today. Too bad they care more about protecting Dear Leader than they do about, say, stopping all the COVID infections and deaths that are totally shoving his “this is going to go away soon” comments right back down his throat.
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I noticed that all of the "states rights" opinions that the Republicans are so adamant about are conspicuously missing. Weird, huh?
Between this, the GSA, and all of the other sycophants, there's little you can do to convince me that T**** (to borrow a Colbert habit) kicked it old school and just has career-ending smut on everybody that's enabling him. Makes the people he's "only fired" seem pretty virtuous.
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If it was so easy for Graham to call another state's GOP SoS in order to perpetrate fraud on the election in favor of the orange buffoon, then what about more allied GOP officials in his own state. Would they more likely be on the side of invalidating votes for entire counties in order to help Graham and the Orange Turd if he asked them the same question?
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Another case of RINO traitor enabling leftist attacks.
Graham, as I've mentioned a couple times, is a war-mongering chickenhawk Zionist and totally opposite to my beliefs.
UN-conservative sneaks claiming to be "conservative" to thereby undermine the real ones began with Northeastern commielib William Buckley in the 50s. -- That's why he was on PBS. -- They became obvious and distinctly specified as "neo-cons" in the late 80s, and are now all but indistinguishable in practice from neo-liberals such as Masnick, unified in corporatism / Zionism.
Of course these traitors to America are handy for masnicks to use for attacks on conservatives, as here. That's the Establishment game.
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Re: Another case of RINO traitor enabling leftist attacks.
Oh right. The No True Conservative argument. I can smell the desperation from here.
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Re: Re: Another case of RINO traitor enabling leftist attacks.
Frankly, this "Republican in name only" moniker is a joke for a party that split off from the Whigs over Lincoln's mission to liberate the Negro slaves.
The whole post-Eisenhower party is "Republican in name only" once it decided to hoover up the racists (and their votes) left in the cold by Lyndon B Johnson (who decided that Civil Rights were a thing the Democratic party should embrace rather than fight) as part of the GOP's "Southern Strategy", a desperation measure in order to evade irrelevance. Bought them half a century, but their current desperation is going a few bridges too far.
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What We Must Believe to Believe Biden Won
https://spectator.org/what-we-must-believe-to-believe-biden-won/
And this one just perfectly describes Masnick, this week getting brave enough to commit:
https://amgreatness.com/2020/11/17/fools-and-nobodys-fools/
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Prove that millions — not hundreds, but millions of votes — were fraudulent in some way. Prove the DNC worked together with Secretaries of State and election officials in every state Biden won — including those helmed by Republican governors, Republican-led state legislatures, or both — to rig the election in Joe Biden’s favor. Until you can do that (and you can’t, because not even the lawyers for Trump have done and will do that), you won’t convince anyone outside of Trumpian circles that Biden won a rigged election.
Additional question: Considering they were on the same ballot in states where this question applies, for what reason would the Dems rig the presidential election but refuse to rig the Senate elections that would have given them a majority in both chambers of Congress?
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Re:
"for what reason would the Dems rig the presidential election but refuse to rig the Senate elections that would have given them a majority in both chambers of Congress?"
He's a fan of comically incompetent evil like Trump and Giuliani. Perhaps he can't imagine the logical results of competent activity?
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Re:
Your tears are, as usual, delicious.
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Re: What We Must Believe to Believe Biden Won
Shitty blogs that agree with your fantasies are not valid evidence.
Why has Trump not presented evidence of the supposed fraud to any of the 24 courts he's been laughed out of so far?
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reshuffle
Is it time we cleaned up the house? Congress?
And started hiring NORMAL people that dont have HUGE agendas??
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Re: reshuffle
Unfortunately the people who are capable of running the country are too smart to get into politics.
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Caution Advised!
It's easy to make fun of the grandstanding by ignorant CongressCritters (redundant), but we need to keep in mind that people vote for them, which is truly scary. Worse, 71 million voters apparently would prefer to live in a country with an authoritarian leader. Even more frightening, there seems to be a substantial part of the population who desire to return to the 1950s, where men were the head-of-household, mom stayed home and baked cake, women were submissive to men, people of color rode in the back of the bus and weren't allowed at the lunch counter in Kresge's, pornography and gay marriage were illegal, there was no Internet, and the greatest threats were Communists in our midst. Trump tapped into that belief, and a significant number of Republican law makers have joined the parade. The recent election will, hopefully, soon be over, but the conspiracy theories, evangelical Christian beliefs, racism, denial of science, etc. were not defeated. By claiming that the election was stolen, Trump has given them even greater credibility.
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Re: Caution Advised!
The funny thing about a lot of that is conservatives / Republicans led the charge to destroy the single-income family, which really started ramping up in the Reagan 80s. While most loudly shouting about "nuclear family", we destroy the ability for people to have well-paying and potentially lifelong jobs, as well as a proper retirement.
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Re: Re: Caution Advised!
Well, "single-income" really is not on the focus for the Republican party. It caters more for the "zero-income" family that mostly lives off inherited entitlements. Like Trump himself who got some millions of his own to play with before he was finally entrusted with gambling away the rest. Those are the people that really enjoy tax cuts.
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The public...
The public and the private sector must never, ever interfere with elections. That must be lefy up to the professionals: congressmen.
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Re: The public...
edit: left up to
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Headline
Change your headline to:
Day After Senator Lindsey Graham Is Falsely Accused Of Trying To Undermine The Election, He Hosts Hearing Attacking Social Media For Undermining Election (Which They Credibly Did).
There. Much better. Because truthful. Try the truth next time.
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We get it, you hate Twitter for fact-checking the president’s comforting lies and love Lindsey Graham for trying to disenfranchise Georgia voters. Sheesh. Get a room next time you feel like jacking off in public.
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Re: Headline
The truth is what I say the truth is!
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Re: Headline
Note: restless94110 has never once tried truth at any time.
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Social media is a problem, primarily because of the people who use it. It's the same problem with all social groups, simply more so due to the massive scale. Every social group becomes an echo chamber. Social media enables massively large echo chambers. People seek out groups which only confirm that which they already believe, groups that tell them they've been right all along--about everything. Social media is the feel-good drug of choice. Reality gets rejected in favor of the comforting delusions.
Then the orange anti-Christ comes along and uses it to his advantage to corrupt half the country into believing every lie he tells.
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Re:
We have met the enemy and he is us.
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Not sure if this has been suggested and I'm sure it will be shouted down but here goes anyway.
Has anyone ever suggested to facecrack or twitter to turn over moderation to hawley or one of his idiotic compatriots for one day? If they think moderation is so damned fucking easy, then that shouldn't even impact their fifteen-shot jim beam lunch. Then they can prove that they should have the right to tell everyone on the internet what can and can't be said.
Thank you for downvoting this/burying it in oblivion but I felt it had to be said.
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Re:
Handing them the keys to the actual sites would likely be a terrible idea, but if the platforms set up a system such that any changes made during that twenty-four hour period were automatically reverted that would be annoying for the users but might work to get the point across.
More likely however is that they'd dodge by claiming that they aren't saying that they can do the job, just that if social media platforms really cared they could offer platforms that only got rid of the right content and did not in any way violate the (imaginary) first amendment rights of their users.
As for reporting comments so long as you seem to be offering a comment/reply in good faith and in a civil manner, even if it's ultimately a bad idea, you're generally fine, it's when someone isn't following that general rule that comments get flagged. There are some exceptions, trolls or other dishonest commenters for example tend to get what they give, but in general act civilized and you'll be treated as such.
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Re: Re:
I wasn't talking about handing them the keys to any fiefdom, just forwarding all the messages that they say can "easily" be properly moderated and giving them final say on all moderation decisions for 24 hours. If I recall properly, they've said numerous times that "anyone" could do the job and not need any type of automated process to assist with the moderation.
You're right that they would bail on that responsibility quickly once they see that there's actual work needed to do the moderation. Hell, they can't even do their own jobs properly.
I keep hoping we get non-corrupt people elected but I am starting to realize that that's just a pipe dream and corruption = govt for the next hundred or so years. There aren't enough AOCs floating around to outweigh the hawleys, unfortunately.
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Re: Re: Re:
Ah, that's much easier and you wouldn't even risk the platform to do it, and given moderators for social medial can and do get PTSD from the content they have to wade through it would be sure to result in all sorts of entertainment watching them either hypocritically run away from such an 'easy' job or get more and more sick and disgusted the more they went through. Win-win really.
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